Soul Boom - Why Are We All Sick? Healing From the Modern Health Crisis w/ Dr. Rangan Chatterjee

Episode Date: December 31, 2024

Physician and author Dr. Rangan Chatterjee joins Rainn Wilson on the Soul Boom podcast to explore how modern life impacts our health and happiness. Dr. Chatterjee shares his holistic approach to addressing common struggles like anxiety, chronic illness, and stress by reconnecting with core values, embracing discomfort, and fostering compassion. He reflects on lessons from his personal journey, including profound insights from Edith Eger and his mission to heal 100 million lives. This transformative conversation reveals practical tools to simplify health, deepen human connection, and create meaningful change in your life. Thank you to our sponsors! Airbnb: http://airbnb.com/host Fetzer Institute: https://fetzer.org/ MERCH OUT NOW! https://soulboomstore.myshopify.com/ God-Shaped Hole Mug: https://bit.ly/GodShapedHoleMug Sign up for our newsletter! https://soulboom.substack.com SUBSCRIBE to Soul Boom!! https://bit.ly/Subscribe2SoulBoom Watch our Clips: https://bit.ly/SoulBoomCLIPS Watch WISDOM DUMP: https://bit.ly/WISDOMDUMP Follow us! Instagram: http://instagram.com/soulboom TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@soulboom Sponsor Soul Boom: [e-mail] Work with Soul Boom: [e-mail] Send Fan Creations, Questions, Comments: [e-mail] Produced by: Kartik Chainani Executive Produced by: Ford Bowers, Samah Tokmachi Companion Arts Production Supervisor: Mike O'Brien Voicing Change Media Theme Music by: Marcos Moscat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to soul. I think we all want to care for others. I think we all actually want to do things for others. I think that's who we are as humans. Because of the way we live these days, because of the toxic negativity online or in the news, we kind of feel that we're separate and we feel that we need to compete with other people.

But I honestly believe that at our core, each and every single one of us is caring and wants to be of service to others. I believe once we start stripping away the noise and the conditioning that we may have had from our school or our parenting or the culture around us, I think that's who we all are. Life is simply a set of experiences,

and the story we put onto those experiences determines the quality of our life. Hey there, it's me, Rain Wilson, and I want to dig into the human experience. I want to have conversations about a spiritual revolution. Let's get deep with our favorite thinkers, friends, and entertainers about life, meaning, and... Idiocy. Welcome to the Soul Boom podcast.

Dr. Chatterjee? Rangan? What should I call you? Doctor? No, well, although it's spelled Rangan, it's pronounced Rangen. Rangen. Perfect. Now, that's fine with me, but I don't want you getting stressed if you can't remember, or, you know, Rangen's completely fine. Rangen, wonderful. I'm so excited to talk to you. I will say that, I didn't know anything about you. And so the research has been so fun. There's a whole world of Dr. Rangan Chatterjee out there and an incredible community that you've built. And I'm really in awe of it.

And let's start with that, this community. I read somewhere that you made a commitment to, I want to help serve 100 million people with the kind of knowledge and wisdom that I've gained in healing. And what brought you to that number and what inspired you to say, hey, I'm not just going to see my clients as a medical doctor. I want to build this community and help as many people as humanly possible because it's kind of a rare thing. It's a great question, Rayne. And it's interesting, isn't it, that these things, they don't make sense when you're in the middle of it going forward. They only make sense when someone like you asked me that question. I look back, right?

I qualified from Edinburgh Medical School in Scotland in 2001. And like many doctors... I didn't know there were doctors in Scotland. There are doctors in Scotland. Yeah, all the way up there. Yeah, I'm veterinarians, but that's great. Okay, cool. And I thought, like most doctors, I've left medical school and I have all the tools

that I now need to help my patients get better. But that's not 100% true. We learn lots of great things at medical school. But I was finding early on in my career that I had this slight frustration. I felt that a lot of what we were taught was how to diagnose disease, put people on the treatment. Usually the treatment involved pharmaceutical drugs. Again, I'm not saying there's a problem with that necessarily, but I feel we were overly utilizing medicines when 80 to 90% of what we see as doctors these days is in some way related

to our collective modern lifestyles. I'm not putting blame on people. I'm simply saying that the kinds of things that we're all struggling with, whether it be weight problems, type 2 diabetes, anxiety, depression, migraines, gut problems, insomnia, whatever it might be, you don't really see these things in traditional societies to anywhere near the same degree. And so I've always had this kind of slight conflict, which is, I want to help my patients get to the root cause of what's going on. But my training really doesn't help me do that. And so I went on a journey, and there's multiple layers to that journey. And so I would travel around the world in my vacation time. I'd go to conferences. I'd learn about all kinds of new science, more

holistic ways of treating people that I wasn't taught at medical school. I started applying those with myself, my family, then my patients. And I was getting people better and better, better than I'd ever managed to get them in my entire career. And I was using less medication than ever before. And that led to me getting my own BBC One television series. Okay? And this was a series prime time show on BBC One television in the UK that went to 70 countries around the world called Doctor in the House. And I'm still so proud of what that show was able to demonstrate. I helped families who were already sick. They were already under doctors and specialists, and they couldn't get better. So I went in with the BBC television cameras, and I spent

four to six weeks with each family alongside them in their houses trying to figure out what was going on. And in every single case, I got them significantly better. So I helped a lady reverse her type of diabetes in 30 days. I helped her young... Was that Dottie? That was Dottie, yeah. Well done. You've done your research. That was Dottie, right? And I learned so much through that experience. I helped a lady, you know, reduce her panic attacks by 70 to 80% in six weeks. A lady was... Was that Phyllis? That was not Phyllis. Oh, damn it. Good go. I guessed anyway. But close. But again, like, you know, like, you know,

Someone with fibromalgia pains who was on 20 pills a day, who hadn't been out of pain for 10 years. In six weeks, she was pain free. And 80 months later, she was on zero pills a day. A lady with menopausal symptoms who didn't want to take hormones, I'd almost help to eliminate them in just six weeks. The point I'm trying to make, Rayne, is that I was able to demonstrate on a prime time show that a lot of these symptoms are a consequence of the way that we're living our lives.

Right. And so, joining this up to your first question, which is this ambitious goal to help 100 million people, I'll tell you where that came from. I realized when that show went out of the power of media. Up until that point, I had just been working one-on-one with patients, which I loved doing. Absolutely loved doing. It's my favorite thing about being a doctor is getting to know people and trying to understand them.

But I remember watching that show go out, seeing all the feedback and thinking, wow, 5 million people are tuning into this live. If only 1% of people watching this take some inspiration and make a change in their life, I've got a jet-lap brain, so I could have the math strong, but I think it's like 50,000 people are making a positive change just from watching a TV show. And I'm sure it's more than 1%. I'm sure it's at least 10%, right, which would be half a million people. And so that journey, again, it's easy with hindsight, but I didn't think about this in the moment. I was just trying to do my job and show the British public that we don't need to medicate everything. There's a lot we can do with our lifestyles, right?

And then through that journey, the truth is that people I was surrounding myself with, and it was an American team in L.A. who were trying to help me. build a website for me, because I was just a doctor. I was like, oh, what do I do I do with this? How do I now share information with people? They push me. It was an American guy called Antonio, who lives, I think, in Pacific Palisades now. I remember the call. He's like, okay, how many people do you want to help? I'm like, well, I don't know, I just want to help people. I don't know how many. And there's a British guy that was like, I don't know how many. I was like, you know, I need a number. A reasonable amount. I said, yeah, I said a few.

We said, what, a million? I said, yeah, a million, but I reckon we could help more than a million. And somehow through that call, we ended up with 100 million. And I said, yeah, I think it's possible. I've seen the power of TV to impact the lies. This was back in 2015. Yeah, I reckon, why not? Now, the reality is, right, is that that figure to me, it's just an arbitrary figure. Whether I achieve it or not is not really the point.

The point is that it helped me think big. Like, if I only help one million people in my life, that's still great. If I end up helping 200 million, that's still great. What it does or what it did was help me make decisions. As my profile group, as I started to write, you know, a book a year for five years. So, we're now on to my six book, but I've written five in the past six years. And I started my podcast back in 2018, which is now the biggest, the biggest, tell show in Europe, right? So as that has all grown, there's more and more opportunity for me to do

really cool things. And that 100 million figure, it very simply helps me make decisions. Is this opportunity that I'm being presented with? Is it going to help lots of people or is it only going to help one? Not that only helping one has no value. Sure. But it helps me make decisions. Yeah. I do a lot of work in climate change and a lot of climate scientists for years and years. for decades, they viewed their role, because they're mostly in academia, to publish papers and do studies. And the alarm bells were being sounded about climate change and issues around it in the 70s, 80s, and 90s.

But the information was not being broadcast, really, until Al Gore started putting it out there. So their responsibility as a scientist kind of began and ended with them publishing studies in academic journals. And for a large part of them of that population, the, you know, promulgating the fact that humanity is on the brink was only being done by a handful of people that were viewed as kind of like, you know, Cassandra's. And so what is it for a medical doctor to,

and granted, you stepped into this role as a BBC doctor so that put you at the forefront. But again, to bring that to a mission, Part of the soul boom ethos is we all have a meaning, we all have a connection, we all have a mission. Sure. And we can take whatever skill set we have and strive to make the world an ever better place. But this is a bold and a big one and an important one that you've undertaken. I'm just wondering personally for you, what's that lever that's like?

So it's a great question, right? So let's go a bit deeper. I only ask great questions. I can see that, right? I can see that already. I grew up in a family of Indian immigrants in the UK, right? So, dad comes in 1962 to the UK, having qualified as a doctor in India, in search of a better life for his immediate family, like my mom and me and my brother, but also to send money back home to his family in India, right? So I grew up with an Indian family at home and a Western culture at school. So, whilst that gives you an identity clash when you're a teenager, you're not quite sure where you fit in and what are your values, what it also does is expose you to do two very different cultures, which now I see as a huge asset.

So, I grew up in a family where, you know, they have these kind of traditional Indian principles that food is medicine, right? So if you're sick... Is that Aravadic medicine? Yeah. But not necessarily. It's just culturally... Culturally, it's there. Yeah.

Like, so, for example, if I had a cold or a sore throat, my mom would make me a drink with, like, ginger and honey and turmeric in, or she'd put extra turmeric in the curry that evening for dinner. Stuff that we haven't really recognized in Western Medicine until very recently, whereas now, turmeric is all the range. Yeah. Now it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we now discovered that turmeric does this. Well, thousands of years.

These guys kind of knew it for a long time, right? So, I think I've always had this holistic approach to health that I felt I wasn't taught at medical school. Then there's a couple of quite personal experiences that have happened. My dad got really sick in 1997. So he was about 57-ish years old. He was working. My dad got sick because of the way he worked.

So for 30 years, he only slept three nights a week. Oh, damn. Yeah. He was working as a consultant physician at Manchester Oil Infirmary. in the day. Then he'd come home, he'd shave, mom would give him dinner, and then he'd go out all night to do GP house calls. And he'd arrive again at 7 a.m., have breakfast, shave, and go all the way into Manchester. So for 30 years, he slept three nights a week. I mean, that is pretty extreme. Wow. Wow. So he gets lupus, the autoimmune disease at the age of 57. He goes onto kidney

dialysis. He loses his sight in one of his eyes. And I moved back to the Northwest, my brother, My mom, we all care for dad for 15 years until dad died in 2013. So it's very stressful time. So I got to see what ill health is like as a carer, right? As a family when it's my father, which gives you a different perspective as to when it's, you're the doctor talking to the patient, right? So there's that. In 2010, my son, who was six months old at the time, he, we had a really, um,

With a really worrying experience, he was six months old. My wife and I went on holiday to France with him just after Christmas, and he had a convulsion. He stopped moving. He was in hospital for five days. We didn't know if he was going to make it. And ultimately, it turned out that he had a preventable vitamin deficiency, fully preventable. And I, because I've struggled with perfectionist tendencies for much of my life, I felt so bad. I thought I'd let my son down. And although modern medicine saved his life, when I asked them, well, if he's been deficient in this businessman for the past six months, could this have an impact on his immune system or why he's got eczema or an allergy? And they had no answers for me. They were, listen, look, we've corrected

it. Just go home now. That wasn't good enough for me. I left that French hospital and I made myself a vow, but I was going to return my son back to full health as if this had never happened. That's what led me to becoming obsessed. I would read research on vitamin D, on the gut microbiome, on our lifestyle, I fly around the world. And basically, I thought, I don't want any other parents have to go through this, right? The more I learned, the more the problems in my medical school training started to make sense to me. I deeply care about it. I deeply care about it. about the well-being of others. I really do.

I know that almost sounds like a cliched answer from a doctor. I really do. I think I always have. Does that come from your family? Does it come from your culture? Or does it just come from your heart? You know, if you'd asked me this a few years ago, I would have said it comes from my family, my culture.

And you know, mom was an amazing carey. She'd look after me and my brother. The way she cared for my dad for 15 years was just incredible. So I think I picked it up. But I'm getting more and more spiritual these days, Rayne. And if I go deeper and think about this, I think we all want to care for others. I think we all actually want to do things for others. I think that's who we are as humans.

And I think because of the way we live these days, because of the toxic negativity online or in the news, we kind of feel that we're separate and we feel that we need to compete with other people. but I honestly believe that at our core, each and every single one of us is caring and wants to be of service to others. I believe once we start stripping away the noise and the conditioning that we may have had from our school or our parenting or the culture around us, I think that's who we all are. So, I don't know if I can say it comes from my family. Yes, I think my family and my upbringing hugely influenced me, but it comes from much deeper within me. Like, I know I can help people because I've never subscribed to this narrative that I would always hear in medicine, that, oh, you know, all this lifestyle stuff is important, but, you know, patients don't do what we tell them to do.

And I'm like, well, I kind of haven't had that issue. And the reason I don't think I've had that issue is because I've never taught down to a patient. I always see them as an equal. So I have a conversation with them. As I write about on this book, right, I say, I've never ever told a patient that, that they have to give up smoking. Because it's not my role. My role is if that patient comes in and asks me,

so first of all, this is not an unsolicited opinion, they're asking me, if they say, Dr. Chaschi, you know, what is the role that smoking is having, you know, what is smoking doing to my health? I will then tell them, I'll say, listen, I think that you smoking 20 cigarettes a day is doing A, B, and C for your health.

If I am confident that they've understood me, and they then say to me, Dr. Chatshia, listen, I understand, you, but actually I get so much enjoyment out of smoking that I don't want to give it up. I've always accepted that. I said, okay, fine. Fair enough. You're an adult. You're allowed to make that decision. And the funny thing is, I feel I've always had good compliance with my patients, Rayne, because I've never subscribed to this paternalistic view in medicine that doctor knows best. I don't know what's best for an individual. I think I've got tools to help them,

but I've always thought that I want to listen, I want to pay attention, and have a meaningful, equal conversation. And even if that patient doesn't want to give up smoking, then, what happens when you take this approach? It's often two or three months later, they end up at your door, say, hey, Dawes Chatsy, you know, I know, I said I didn't want to give up smoking, but actually now I've changed my mind because nobody wants to be told what to do. Right. No one. Children don't want to be, adults don't want to be.

So it has to come from within. So I've seen the impact one-on-one with patients. I've seen the impact on my show, Doctor in the House, where I was able to help these patients with so-called irreversible conditions, reverse them. And I'm like, we need to get this out there because the prevailing narrative is that we're getting sicker, we need more medications, we need more scans.

And I'm not saying those things are a problem, but there is another way. I don't believe that we're meant to have this level of sickness, physical sickness and mental sickness in society. It is completely unnecessary. So my drive is that I know that it's much simpler than we think. And so my goal really is to try and simplify health, simplify happiness. I go, guys, we can all be healthier and happier that we currently are.

I want to wax philosophical for a second, because this is something I've been thinking a lot in my life personally. So recently, a big chunk of my house burned down. In fact, just last week, there were these fires out in Ventura County. Two of my neighbors lost their houses completely, like, burned from top to bottom. Now, I had always seen fires on television and, you know, and the terrible consequences and the Paradise Fire. And our house had been close to the Woolsey Fire in Malibu years ago. But all of a sudden, you have this personally.

experience and it kind of galvanizes your feelings toward action. Like now I know what it's like to have shit burned up in a fire. I have met families sobbing who have lost everything in a fire and I feel much closer to my fellow fire sufferers even though I only lost a couple of rooms, thankfully. And then I was recently hanging out with a friend of mine. And he's a very interesting fellow. He's very successful in business. And he is like the most loyal person you'd ever meet.

Like if I got sick or something like that, he would fly from wherever he was and he would be at my bedside. He would do anything for me. He would do anything for his daughter. He would do anything for the people that he's closest to. These two stories are going to connect. but I often think about what is it that holds us back from taking on a commitment to be of greater and deeper service to humanity in and the reason I bring up my this this friend of

mine is he's not involved in any causes he's not involved in any charities he doesn't do any fundraising he's but he's very very loyal fiercely loyal to his family and his friends and I think we all are that way. And it reminds me of your story and the fact that your father was sick, it was obviously there was lifestyle. Your son almost died. And there were that kind of like goaded you to probe ever deeper into the aspects of healing that maybe you had overlooked.

So you had these personal experiences that galvanized you toward action. And I guess, you know, the, The clarion call is like, how do we, how do we do that as a species more? Because as I see it more and more, we need to be more less self-centered and more other-centered in our lives. I seek to be more other-centered and less self-centered in my personal life. But how do we get there? I guess that's the philosophical question behind it.

because I'm really in awe of the steps that you took. And I hate to say it about your father and his illness and your son in his illness. But thank God your father and your son got sick because it has allowed you to attempt to reach 100 million people with healing. Yeah, there's so many interesting points there for me, Rain. If I just take what you just finished off there with,

you say you hate to say it, but I completely agree with you. I completely agree with you. I have learned, particularly from one of the most powerful conversations I've ever had in my life, which was with a lady called Edith Eager, who was in the Holocaust. She was in Auschwitz concentration count when she was 16. And I had a conversation with her on my podcast about four years ago. It is still to this date the conversation that I think about the most.

It literally changed who I was. I can maybe tell you about it a bit later, but the key message I learned from Edith in that conversation was that, it's the final word she said to me, which was, Rangan, I've lived in Auschwitz, and I can tell you that the greatest prison is the prison you create inside your own mind. Wow. Those words, I feel are tattooed into my soul after that conversation. What does that mean? What it means?

Self-limiting beliefs. It means that we create stories every day that imprison us. And we can create empowering stories if we know how to do it, if we know that we are able to do it. So I'll give me an example. Okay, so when she was 16 years old, she grew up in Eastern Europe. She was at home with her sister and her two parents, and she had a date that evening with her boyfriend. So she was really excited, what dress am I going to wear tonight? Okay. They get a knock on the door. They get put on a train straight to Auschwitz concentration camp.

When they get to Auschwitz, both of her parents are murdered within one to two hours of getting there. Okay, she's 16. There's many remarkable things she said to me, Rayne. A little time after her parents were murdered, the senior prison guards asked her to dance for them because they knew she was a dancer. she's just had a Paris murder, she's in hell, and she now has to dance and perform for these male senior prison guards, right? The first thing she said to me that I remember was Rangen. When I was dancing in Auschwitz, I wasn't in Auschwitz. I never forgot

the final words my mother said to me, which were these. Edith, never forget, nobody can take from you the contents that you put inside your own mind. So Edith says to me, when I was in Auschwitz and dancing, I wasn't in Auschwitz. In my mind, I was in Budapest Opera House. I had a beautiful dress on. The orchestra was playing. There was a full house. I was like, okay, this is pretty remarkable. Given what's just happened, she's reframing her whole experience in her mind. Then she tells me, while she was in Auschwitz, she started to see the prison guards as the prisoners. He said, they weren't free. They were

They weren't living their life. They want being who they are here to be. In my mind, I'm free. And then she finishes off with what I've already mentioned, which is, I've lived in Auschwitz and I can tell you the greatest prison you will ever live inside is the prison you create inside your own mind. So my interpretation of that, which literally has changed me, no question. I'm a different person pre that conversation to post that conversation. I realize in that moment that life is simply. a set of experiences, and the story we put onto those experiences determines the quality of our life. And so I would practice for a period of months and years. If I ever got emotionally

triggered in the day by something, in the evening, I'd reflect to go, why did that trigger me? What was the story I was creating? How can I write a different story here that's more empowering? And if I was ever struggling, Rain, I would say to myself, hey, wrong. Listen, you know, Edith could reframe her experiences in Auschwitz. I think you can manage to reframe this in your life, right? So, to make it really practical for someone, instead of, you know, and I appreciate we're here in L.A., the traffic's horrific. I've experienced it for the last few days.

If you're the kind of person, and I'm not criticizing this, I'm just trying to help people understand just how limiting our beliefs become and how they entrap us, you're driving on the roads. to work and a driver cuts you up. Now, many people's default reaction is to start complaining, right? Stupid driver, they shouldn't do that. They need their eyes checked. You know, whatever it might be. Now, there is a consequence of taking that action to life, right? The consequence is you're generating emotional stress inside your body. And that emotional stress will have to be neutralized in some way or another. So as a daughter, why that's of interest to me, it's because if I'm trying to help someone reduce their sugar intake or caffeine or alcohol or whatever it might be,

we focus too often on the behaviors. But what we need to understand is, what role does that behavior play? If you're getting offended by the world around you, if you think that the way you feel is down to that driver, you're in a very fragile place. You're like a puppet on a string, but you can train yourself consciously, initially, and then it becomes unconscious like I have. Well, it's, I don't mean to cut you off, but it's interesting because I noticed that with me because I seek to have a spiritual practice of my life and I pray and meditate daily and I read, you know, inspiring, uplifting writings that I hope that I hope will bring me kind of an increased wisdom and perspective in my day. And there's times I'm driving down the freeway and someone

cuts me off and I'm just like, oh, God bless them. They must be, have something terrible going on with them and how were they raised that they think it's okay to just cut people off. You know, I have compassion for them. I wish them well on their journey. And there's other times I'm like, you fucking asshole, what the fuck is going? I'm going to get in front of them. I'm going to get it. And what is it in my mindset that sometimes I'm able to just to embrace them holistically and other times I want to ram them off the road? But those two situations are, I think they're a beautiful example that there is a situation happening. And how we respond to that can be different, right? Just because someone cuts you up, it does not mean necessarily that you have to get angry

and generate this emotional stress. You don't have to, but many people reign, I would say, don't even know that between the stimulus and response, there is a space. And therefore, going back to your point from a few minutes ago, is to what is it that's going to prompt to take action, right? I had a personal experience that led me to now wanting to spread my message with the world. You've had a personal experience, right? Many people who've had profound personal experiences, they see the light and want to change. I think if we're able to help everyone realize that, hey, there are external situations in life, but we put the story onto those situations and we can choose empowering narratives. That already starts to change.

humanity and changes the way we interact with the world, makes us kinder, makes us more joyful, makes us more caring. So the practical advice I give to many of my patients over the years is, hey, listen, when you're really struggling, think about this idea that if you were that other person, you'd be behaving in exactly the same way as them. That's the phrase for him that's changed my life. I'll tell you why it's changed my life. Now, say that again, because you lost me a little bit. If I was that other person, I'd be behaving in exactly. exactly the same way as them. Now, I'll tell you...

The guy cutting you off on the freeway. Yeah. But I'll tell you why. If I was that person and I had their childhoods and the bullying that they'd experienced and the parents that they had. The pressures that were put on them. And the friends that they had and the boss at 18 who bullied them, whatever it might be, I would see the world in exactly the same way as them and I would be behaving in exactly the same way as them.

It doesn't mean that it makes it right. It just means that my initial way of interacting with them is one of compassion. Oh, yeah. And I say, what story do you need to create to make them a hero? Oh, well, maybe it's a dad whose young baby girl was up with ERAke all night and he's late for work. Maybe it's a single mom who has been late three times in the past two weeks and is on a final warning. If she's late one more time, she loses her job. Right. Whether it's true or not, Rain, it doesn't matter.

For your well-being, that doesn't matter. What matters is that you choose an empowering story. So I believe if we could all of us understand that we, and again, Edith Eager taught me this lesson. And I still think about it. If she can reframe in Ashwitz, I can reframe in my life. Even if I have a bad day, it is not even 0.0001% of the bad day she was having. Right. So I don't, I find it inspiring. And that practice, it's changed me. It's changed how we interact with the world. I think once you realize there's a gap, you are more compassionate, but too many of us are stuck in our stories. And I think another way of answering your question is, I believe that if you watch children, they're present, they're mindful, they can be in the moment. I think children, certainly what I've seen, certainly young enough, they often do share. Right? That's certainly what I've seen. Yeah. I think society

conditions that out of us, particularly modern, I was going to say Western society, but I think it's more, I think it's everywhere now. You know, people say that America is one of the most individualistic societies on the planet today. I don't know if that's true or not, but certainly my understanding, I think, you know, America is an incredible country. But I think everything is got a cost. So my understanding of the American dream that you can come here and work on and be anything that you want to be, I think it's fantastic. But there's a potential downside as well. If we all think everything's on me and it's all down to me and I don't need anyone else, you know, because starts to become problematic. And you know this, you've felt this, but if you

look at the science of a research, it shows us very clearly that people who are other-focused, they're happier, the healthier. The psychologist Elizabeth Dunn did this great study where they gave these individuals money and they had a choice, either spend it on yourself or spend it on somebody else. The people who spent it on other people, they were happier. People who have been, you know, who were alcoholics. If they help other alcoholics, they're much less likely to relapse for those who don't. So it is who we are.

But yes, the sad truth is, Ray, is that sometimes, we have to have a difficult life experience before it kind of jolts us out of our way of existence and encourages us to change. So much great stuff in what you're saying there. And what you're talking about is kind of a deep, profound, fundamental, seismic shift in compassion for someone else, that person who cuts you off on the freeway. To deeply put yourself in their shoes, that's one of the things I talk about in Soul Boom, the book like, what if we had a compassion machine?

Yeah. That we could go in and it had VR and you're in an MRI and it wired your brain. And you undertook the life tasks of someone completely different than you and censorily put you in their shoes and in their skin behind their eyes. Exactly. It could open up a whole new world of like seven, eight billion people and the struggles out there. Yeah. And if I may, and it is a perspective shift, and this is why for me, seeking and failing often to walk a spiritual path allows me that perspective shift. If you read the writings of the Buddha, if you read the teachings and witness the life of Jesus Christ, it allows you to shift that perspective for when that person,

cuts you off. What I again, going back to this question is like I get a little judgey sometimes of someone of like, oh, my aunt has, you know, this, you know, chronic inflammation of blah, blah, blah. Now I'm raising money for chronic inflammation of blah, blah, blah, because my aunt had it. It's like, yes, but people are suffering all the time. Why do we need that personal experience? Why do I need my house to half burn down for me to have deep compassion? for other people whose houses have burned down. Maybe it's just, it's just the human condition. But it's also reflective of culture.

I think we are quite a me-focused culture these days, certainly in the US and in the UK. So I think if that's what you've been surrounded by and that's what you've been brought up with and that's what your school encourages, like, oh, what is your grade? How does it compare to other people? You want to do better or whatever it might be.

That starts to become who you are. And unless you have a reason to shift out of that, you often don't. If you're rewarded for being that person financially, and yes, society often rewards you, at least in terms of material success, for being me focused. It comes down to what we value. If you kind of value, you know, the amount of Instagram followers and the amount of money you weren't and, you know, you're... A lot. A lot.

And there's nothing wrong with that necessarily, right? I'm kidding, come on. But do you know what I mean? Because I get it, but the problem is that you need something to jolt you out of that often to make a change. I think that is part of the human experience. I had a chat with this chap called John McAvoy a few years ago on my podcast. I came to my house and we spent for two and a half hours and it was the most compelling story you've ever heard. And essentially, John McAvoy used to be one of Britain's most wanted criminals. He was in Europe's highest security prison.

two life sentences for convicted armed robbery. And he's now free, and he's inspiring children all around the world to improve their lives through physical activity. His story is incredible. But I remember, after my conversation with him, he left my house and I went to the kitchen and I saw my wife, and I said, hey, babe, listen, honestly, you know, if I had John's upbringing, I think I'd be in jail right now.

Like, genuinely, I think when you unduly, you understand his upbringing. There was no father figure around. Who were the father figures around that inspired him? What were their values? I thought, yes, I would probably be in jail. So those things have really shifted how I view the world. It makes me less judgmental. It reminds me that actually, you know what? We're all born. We are a certain way. And it's our environment and our upbringing and our culture that influences how we think and how we see the world. Another powerful experience from me, Rayne, which had taught me this, was I did the London marathon in 2021. Long story, the race, the event didn't go particularly well. I had an injury,

three miles in. My left groin was hurting from 10 miles to 26 miles. I could barely walk. It was agony, right? So physically, it was an incredibly challenging experience. I wasn't happy when I finished. I was just relieved. But I got to a hotel room. I showered. And then I just sat there with a drink and I thought, wow, what an incredible experience. And I'll tell you what I learned from that, which I think is really important given the time in which we're in. I have landed in America. I'm here talking to you maybe two weeks after the election, right? And what I see around me is this seems to have divided many, many people. Okay?

what I saw at the London Marathon was what humans are when we get put together. What I saw that day was people who don't know each other just helping others. There was crowds all the way around. We were going through some really deprived, some socially deprived areas of London.

There was council houses. You know what? There were people from there. They'd made cakes. They'd made sweets. They had made signs. They were supporting people all the way around. And I thought, wow, we get told that we're all divided, that the world's never been more toxic, that people are...

You know, I've heard that... If I heard this six months ago, when Vivek Murty, your current Surgeon General was in London, and I spoke to him on my show, he told me that one in six Americans back then are not talking to a family member because of their political views. But what I saw at the London Marathon is, I thought so many of these people will have different

political views. But when we're together with other humans, our default nature is to be supportive, is to be kind, is to be compassionate. And the London Marathon taught me so much. Forget the physical experience of the race. It was more what I saw about humanities. I believe our true nature is to be kind, is to be compassionate. And one of the practices I do, do each morning, which helps me with this, which perhaps is going to be helpful for people listening to this, is I ask myself three questions each morning. The final question, as I finish my morning routine with my coffee, is what quality do you want to showcase to the world today? And it's such a beautifully simple question, but it's very powerful because it will often be

things like patience, compassion, empathy. These are the qualities I want to showcase to the What was the one you picked for today? Compassion. Yeah, it was. I want to be kind today. I want to, in every interaction with Rain, with Rain's team, with the Uber driver who gets me here, with the Uber driver takes me back, I want to showcase the quality of compassion. It doesn't mean I'm always perfect, Rain.

But you were asking before, how do we jolt people out of this? How do we get people to care? Well, I challenge anyone who's listening to this right now for seven days or 14 days, answer that question every morning. It'll take you under one minute to do it. Right. And just as you're answering it, just really think about it. Then, by intentionally thinking about that every morning, you are considerably more likely to showcase that quality. You won't be perfect. But later on, when you get an email from your colleague that pisses you off, instead of reacting, you might go, oh, I said I was going to show compassion today.

It just gives you, it creates that little gap between the stimulus and the response. Sometimes you won't be able to do it. You will react. But the next morning, when you answer it, you go, oh yeah, you know, I said I was going to do that yesterday. I wasn't able to. Okay, I'm going to try again. This is how we make change. It's not by waking up one morning and going, right, I'm going to change who I am. No, it's the small things that we do consistently. You do that for a month. I guarantee you'll be a different person in 30 days because you'll just make these small shifts each day. We at Soul Boom talk a lot about, spiritual virtues education.

And similarly, we can do this with our children. And we did that with my son, Walter, where we would have a virtue of the week. And like, hey, this week, let's all work on compassion. Let's notice compassion around us. And in a week, we'll check in on a Sunday morning and we'll say, hey, what acts of compassion did we perform throughout the week?

And it gives you kind of a literacy about, you know, about spiritual qualities, about personal leadership virtues that you can manifest and make your life back. Yeah, I love it. And then if you take that one step further, so one thing I always love to do with my patients, and it's kind of one of the key messages in this new book, right? It's this idea that we're so used to getting expertise

from outside of ourselves. I think half the reason we're so confused these days, let's talk about through the lens of health, for example. Okay. People know now that what you put in your mouth plays a huge impact on your health, physical health and mental health. But there are big debates and arguments over what is the perfect diet. And what I will often have on my podcast is, I'll talk to one expert, one well-credentialed

expert, right? And they'll suggest that, let's say, a low-carb diet might be really good and will give me three or four studies to back up their point. Six weeks later, I might talk to another well-credentialed expert, and they may say a vegan diet. A vegan diet is what we all need to do. And they'll give me three or four really good studies to back that up. And then people would often in my Instagram DMs say, Dr. Chatam really confused.

Even though I try my best to sort of help bring it all together, people say, listen, I don't know who to believe. Like, both experts sounded really good. I don't know which expert to trust. Chat to 1 in this book is called Trust Yourself, because I don't believe that the helpful question is to say, which expert should I trust? I think the powerful question is to say, why do I no longer trust myself? And why I think that's such a key point is because we're living in this world now

where we are being bombarded with information and external expertise, and we've outsourced our inner expertise to external experts. I am not saying ignore people. Listen to experts, but then put it through your own filter. So I say to people, okay, you like what that expert has to say and that expert. Okay, for four weeks, try what this person's recommending and pay attention. How do you feel? How's your energy?

How are your relationships? What's your sleep like? What is your gut like? You know, when do you start getting tired? Okay. Then for another four weeks, try the other person. Try their diet. Go vegan.

pay attention to how you feel in those same things. And let's bring that back to what we were talking about. These are virtues, right? You have a virtue of the week that you've done with your family before. It's great to practice that virtue. And then let's take it one step further for people who want to do that or answer the question that I suggest that they ask themselves each morning.

Pay attention to how you feel when you're being open-hearted and kind and empathetic. And pay attention to how you feel when you want to be right all the time. And that person wronged you and you're gonna tell them that they wronged you and you're gonna be reactive. I'm not saying, believe me or believe you. I'm saying, experience both. Yeah. And see how you feel.

Look at the data. Look at the data and then go, oh, well, I kind of like living like this. Conducting little life experiments. Yeah, and then you don't need to listen to me or you or on any other expert. You're like, actually, you know what? It doesn't really matter what they say. When I'm being kind, I feel better about the worlds. The other thing, Ray, I've really realized over the past few months,

is that every single behavior we do in life either comes from the energy of love or the energy of fear. And a huge part of my job as a doctor for many years is to try and help people change their behaviors. But I think we overly focus on the behaviors. I think we need to focus more on the energy behind the behaviors. Interesting. What's the underlying drive behind that behavior? Okay, I'll give you a really practical example.

Alcohol consumption, right? People want to know alcohol good or bad. Far too simplistic, far too black and white. We have lots of current health experts now in the online world, many of them who I really, really like, now saying that there is no biologically safe dose of alcohol. And I'm very familiar with those studies. I know that alcohol is what we would call them my alcohol. is what we would call a mitochondrial toxin.

It's a poison for the body. Now, I understand that viewpoint. At the same time, we have to acknowledge that there are plenty of societies around the world, including these so-called blue zones, these areas around the world where people are living to... 110. A ripe old age in really good health.

Who are having a glass of red wine every evening at 5 p.m. with their friends. What's going on there? Is alcohol a poison? Or is something else going on? And I think it's the end of... energy behind the behavior. So, in the blue zones, these guys are living low-stressed lives. They have a strong sense of community. My understanding is that they're using alcohol in a very

intentional way, not to get drunk, but to bond with their friends at 5 p.m. We've had a good day. Let's have half a glass of red wine to bond, intentionally connect. I think many of us in the West are using alcohol to help reduce the stress in our lives. or we feel isolated and lonely. So we are trying to use alcohol to numb that discomfort. I passionately believe that the impact of the alcohol on you is going to depend on the underlying motivations behind it. So when I say the energy behind the behavior,

that's what I'm talking about, New Year's resolutions. Why, in my view, do most New Year's resolutions fail? Because I think the energy behind it is one of lack. I'm not good enough. I've let my body go. There's guilt. There's shame there. I'm trying to overcome how I view myself, which is why I can white-knuckle it for two or three weeks. But at some point, I'm going to revert back because I haven't changed the way that I view myself. I used to do that. I used to beat myself up in January. I would do really well for two or three weeks. And I miss a day and the negative self-talk

would start. That's an energy of fear behind my behaviors. Whereas now, I like the person I am. I am. There I say, as a British guy that I love the person I am, I don't mean that in a narcissistic way. How dare you? Yeah. We don't say that in the UK, right? We don't, well, that's really difficult. It's tall poppy syndrome and you're a very tall poppy. I'm very tall, but I, the truth is, I do like the person I am. I do like how I like the person you are. Thank you, man. I appreciate that. Yeah. But the point I'm trying to make is that now behavior change becomes actually relatively easy because I'm not trying to overcome who I think I with my behaviors, because I like who I am, it's natural for me to make healthy choices.

So, I think it's that energy behind the behavior that we're not focusing on enough, which is why I believe we're struggling to change our behaviors in the long term, hence the title of this book, which is make change that lasts. Arthur Brooks, who was on the show, he said very famously in a talk I heard him give, and it has stuck with me like nothing else, is that it is impossible to feel love. and fear at the same time. You cannot feel both of those emotions at the exact same time. Synchronicity, I heard that phrase yesterday.

Do you know who told me yesterday? Who's that? Edith Eager. Whoa. So one of the things I decided to do on this 10-day trip because that conversation I had with Edith four years ago was remote. It was in the lockdowns, right?

Yeah. Where's she located? She's in San Diego. Oh, wow. And she was doing her first. live event yesterday and her grandson invited me. Oh. So I met her for the first time yesterday. Amazing. And that's something she told me yesterday. So love and fear cannot exist at the same time. And Arthur's also saying that. Hmm. That's incredible. It's wonderful, isn't it? So when I go to fear,

which is a lot, I have an anxiety disorder. I've dealt with anxiety my whole life. I used alcohol, by the way, simply to quell anxiety. I used anxiety. I used. used it like a medication like cocks are up. It served the role. Yeah. And we're trying to change the behaviors without understanding the role they play in our lives. Right. So, but this is what popped up in my head. Since I have you here, you've got this new book. The thing, the number one thing that we hear from in the soul boom community is people wanting to reduce anxiety. I think that anxiety is the disease of the contemporary Western world. It's hard to put your finger on exactly what anxiety is. You can ask 10 different experts and they'll give you 10 different answers

of what it is. It's fear. It's overcompensation. It's, you know, it's an unsureity of what action to take next. It's needs not being met, et cetera. It's probably all of those things. But what do you have, what changes that last can you give to our soul boom viewers that are struggling with anxiety? Anxiety is so, so common these days, right? And I think anxiety means different things to different people. The way it shows up in our lives can be very, very different. So some people respond very well to journaling exercises, right? For example, right? Because anxiety is in our mind. And sometimes we just get stuck with our days, we're continuing, we're getting on with our days,

and we have this worrying anxiety like just there in the background affecting how we feel, affecting how we act. So I don't believe that there's one approach that works for every single person. That's what 23 years of clinical medicine has taught me, right? Everyone needs a different approach. For some people, regularly moving their bodies, right, actually massively helps with anxiety. Right. But for some people, like if they can get, and I know it can be difficult for some people, but if they can get to 60 minutes, even 90 minutes a movement a day, their anxiety gets almost non-existence.

Yeah. And so what's interesting is that we'll then frame that in the modern world as exercise helps manage anxiety in some people, right? Not in everyone. But you could also frame it the other way. Is it that exercise helps lower anxiety, or is it that our lack of movement is kind of of results, like, is it basically that exercise is helping reduce anxiety? Flipping the equation.

Yeah, or is it that basically our lack of movement means that naturally many of this are going to be anxious. The other thing I don't think people think about the anxiety response is that it's perfectly normal if you're feeling stressed, right? So, can I just quickly explain what stress is? Because I think it helps understand anxiety. Certainly for many of my patients, it does. Let's imagine we're 300,000 years ago, we're hanging out and I'll hunter-gatherer

tribe, doing our thing. And I see a wild predator approaching the camp. That's scary. Okay? So my stress response gets activated immediately. There are several things that happen. And it should. As it should.

Right? So what happens? My blood glucose goes. goes up so more glucose can get to my brain. That's a good thing. My blood pressure goes up, so more oxygen can go around my body. That's a good thing. My blood becomes more prone to clotting so that if that predator was to cut me, instead of bleeding to death, the blood's going to clot, that's going to save my life. These things are all super helpful in the short term, right? What else happens? Your amygdala, which is the emotional part of your brain, goes on to high alert. You become hypervigal.

vigilant, you're scared, you can hear pinpricks around you. These things are appropriate if there is a wild predator approaching your camp. The problem today, Rayne, is that our stress responses have been activated, not by wild predators for most of us, but by the state of our daily lives, by the news headlines, by our email inboxes, by the three social media channels. We're trying to keep up today with the fact that we don't live with our communities, we might have to look there and bring up young kids and try and care for sick elderly parents who live an hour away, whatever it might be. These are huge psychological stresses, and our bodies are reacting in very similar ways. So, if you're amygdala, the emotional part of your brain is getting activated

appropriately, if there's a predator there, or if you're on a dark street in LA on a Friday night, you're walking back to your car and you think someone's following you, you want your You're an amygdala to be on high alert. You want to be hypervigilant. But if your daily lives are stressful, as they are for so many, the World Health Organization said 10 years ago that chronic stress is the health epidemic of the 21st century, then is it any wonder that the whole world is feeling anxious or many people are feeling anxious? It's a natural response when you feel that your life is under threat. So how do you make the change that lasts for the dailyness of the

of a stress response that is turning into chronic anxiety. Well, there's many things you could do, right? The first thing you have to understand is that this is a normal response if you feel under threat, right? So to accept it and make it okay, to say, it's all right, then I'm feeling this way, there's a thousand different reasons why, I should feel this way. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with you.

You're not broken. Right. It's like this is a natural response, but we're not wanting this natural response being activated every single day. So what can we do? Okay, for some people that's movement, for some people, the best exercises, they wake up in the morning and just for five minutes, they write out anything that comes in their mind, just like a brain dump, basically. Right. Right. That is remarkably effective. Remarkably effective. For some people, not for everyone,

because many people don't realize that all these thoughts are whirring around their brain and they do nothing to process them. This is not a manuscript for your new. new book, right? This is not something to show your partner or your colleague. You can just literally dump out anything in your brain. And I promise you, for some people, they start to find three or four things that they're really worried about that they did not know about until they did this exercise. There's more practical exercises that people can do first thing in the morning, right? Like, you can write down, what is one thing I'm worried about today? Why am I worried about this? Is there anything I can do to prepare for this thing?

What's one reason it won't be as bad as I think it's gonna be. And what's one upside of the situation? That's an exercise that I call the five-step release. That's beautiful. Wow. I use it with so many patients, it doesn't help everyone. But nothing does. Right. So if someone's listening to this and they feel drawn to it, I'd say, try that.

Try it for seven days. For some people, it completely, I can't say completely eliminates it, but makes it much more manageable. Right. Okay. The other thing I think people would find where you're useful, I'm a fan. of morning routines. Now, I understand that the whole context of a morning routine

has become rather cliched now, right? You have to be up at 5 a.m. for your cold plunge. Yeah. And most people are just like, give me a fucking break. Are you kidding me? But here's the reality, the way I see it rain is that we've all got on morning routine, whether we think we do or not. The question is, are we intentional about it or not? I know you talk about brushing your teeth as one of them, that we don't shortcut brushing our teeth.

We don't go, you know, maybe on Tuesday, I'll just floss, and maybe on Wednesday morning, I'm going to just brush the top half of my teeth. You know, it has been ingrained. It has been ingrained, but it wasn't a habit when you were three, but you've learned because you followed two of the core principles of behavior change, which is make it easy, and stick on the new behavior onto an existing habit. Right. So can I just briefly explain a framework for morning routines? Yes. I think it will help everyone, especially those who've got anxiety, because it helps it helps give you a sense of control over your life. This is beautiful. I love it.

So I've seen tens of thousands of patients over the years. And with many of them, I talked to them about how they start the day has a profound influence on the rest of their day. And I've also had people to say they don't have time. So let me explain how I help them frame this. I say for me, my framework for morning routines is what I call the three M's. Mindfulness, movement, and mindset. You don't have to do them all. If all you can manage is 1M, you're still going to get benefits.

But I like to do the 3Ms myself, and I like my patients to try and do it if they can. Okay, so the first M is mindfulness. That could be any practice of mindfulness that you like, not that I like, but you like. And that journaling practice that you referenced earlier, could be... It could be that. Now, I put that in mindset. I'll explain you how, which is the third M. But yes, for me, it could be meditation, breathwork, you know, having a cup of coffee inside. not also scrolling Instagram at the same time, right?

Being really present with what you're doing. So for me, I wake up, now I do get up early, but I go to bed early. It's what works for me, right? I come downstairs in my house, in my pajamas, and I'll do a form of meditation. Wait, wait, wait, wait. You wear pajamas? I wear pajamas. What is this, 1957?

What do you wear? Tidy Whitties. Are you, you go commander, right? Yeah, no, yeah, I'm just, I'm walking around with my giant pay. tail torso and some skivies. That's it. Well, I do wear pajamas. My wife loves it. Okay. Well, it's a treat. It's a treat.

It's a treat. I enjoy it. Yeah. So I come down, the point is, I'm not getting changed or anything, right? I'm making it really easy. I come downstairs and meditate for 10 minutes, right? That's my first M. Then I go into my kitchen and I make coffee. Mm-hmm. While the coffee is brewing for five minutes, because that's how I like my coffee to brew. there's a timer on, I do a workout in my pajamas, right? Literally every morning. I'll either kettlebell or a dumbbell or some body weights.

I literally just five minutes in my kitchen. You have kettlebells sitting in your kitchen. I do. I have one kettlebell and one dumbbellbell. And a few years ago, my wife said to me, hey, baby, you're going to leave this stuff in the kitchen? And I said, yeah, because if we put it in the garage or the cupboard or the attic, it's never getting used.

It's never going to use. So it's there to visually trigger me and the kids now, and my wife sometimes. Okay. So I do a five-minute workout, and then that's my second M movement. And the third M is mindset. So I've got my cup of coffee that's made just the way I like it. I'll first of all answer some journal questions, including the one I've already mentioned. Okay.

And then I've got a few books kicking around my house in my kitchen. I'll just pick, the uplifting books. I'll pick up one of them and I'll read a few pages. if I'm lucky, maybe a chapter, if I have time, something like spiritual or uplifting that reminds me of what's important in the world. Whether you... Whether you have anxiety or you're struggling with low mood or you're struggling with your weight, I promise you that that intentionality each morning is going to start changing how

you feel about yourself. So yes, that can help with anxiety because the meditation or the breathwork can absolutely help for some people. The movement will definitely help. The journaling and answering questions will help. The reframing your resistance has the potential to help. And I would encourage people to play around with that, right? Experiment. Now, again, I've had one patient a few years ago, so I don't have time for this 3M stuff. Dr. Chaddy. It all sounds great. I'm a single mom. I've got three kids. I'm busy. I said, okay, okay. Do you have 10 minutes? No, I don't have 10 minutes. I said, okay, do you have five minutes? Well, I've got it.

five minutes. I said, okay, let me help you create one in five minutes. So what did she do? For one minute, she would do a type of breathing called three, four, five breathing. When you breathe in for three, hold for four and breathe out for five. For one minute, she would do that. Yeah. Okay. So... That seems doable. Good. Yeah, because anytime you're out, breath is longer than you're in breath, you help to switch off the stress part of your nervous system, which is what drives anxiety. Okay? And you help promote. the relaxation part of your nervous system. She does that for one minute.

That's five breaths. Okay? Then she does two minutes of yoga. That's all. Two minutes. That's her movement. And then she does, for her mindset piece, she just two minutes of affirmations.

And she just says to herself and sometimes writes down, I'm calm, I'm happy, I'm stress-free. Mm. That practice that only took her five minutes completely changed her life. That's amazing. That's so cool. Yeah, she was like a different person.

And within a few weeks, she had a really bad skin, which I thought stress was driving. His skin was 50% better in about a week or two. And then it led to what I call a ripple effect. It led to more positive changes in her life. One of the reasons we can't make change at last, Raina, that goes to anxiety or anything that we're struggling with. It's because we think change has to be really big. We get up and unintentionally, we start scrolling negative news headlines, scrolls,

controlling negativity on social media, and then we wonder why we feel anxious. If you start your day looking at the news and see the worst of humanity and what's going on in the world, of course it's going to contribute to your negative view about the world. Of course it does. What a little routine does, Rayne, is it gives you a sense of control. I know Arthur Brooks has got his own model of happiness. My model of happiness is that there are three ingredients to happiness, alignment, contentment, and control. You don't work on happiness. You work on your alignment, contentment, and control. And the side effect is that you are happier more often. What do I mean by control?

I'm not talking about controlling the world. I'm talking about a sense of control. Right? We know from the research that people who have a strong sense of control are happier, the healthier, they earn more money, they have better relationships, right? So a little routine each morning, even a five-minute routine, it grounds you, it gives you a sense of control. That even though I have 20 emails to get back to... Right. You're behind on your bills and you've got three kids that need to get to school. Yeah. You give yourself a little routine each day

that helps ground you. And rain, the truth is, like, there were days where I don't do all three Ms. But one thing I've done maybe for five years now is that middle M movement. I have rarely missed a day. So I have a five-minute strength workout every morning, even here in LA. And people think that's got something to do with willpower. It's got nothing to do with willpower. I follow the same rules that we use to brush our teeth each morning.

Yeah. I apply that. I make it easy. Five minutes. Pajamas. I don't have to get changed, right? So five minutes. And then I stick it on to an existing habit.

What's a habit? It's an automatic action that you do. without any conscious thought. My coffee at 5.30 a.m. is a habit. I don't need a reminder. I don't need my assistant to phone me and remind me, hey, wrong, and make sure you make your coffee. No, I'm going to make it. Therefore, by sticking my five-minute workout onto it, it's much more likely it's going to happen. And with these little actions each day, Rain, you build momentum. If there's someone who is listening to us, Wayne, who feels stuck, they are paralyzed with procrastination, fear, and anxiety, I'd say, think about what is a five-minute action that

you could do each morning, right? Yeah. Any five-minute action and do it consistently. And I promise... Other than masturbation. Other than masturbation. Mm-hmm. Like journaling, like meditation, like working out, whatever it might be, do it regularly and actually

Why I'm so passionate about this is, I spoke to a body language expert a few years ago called Vanessa Van Edwards. And she said to me wrong, and when you're meeting a human being for the first time, you're asking yourself two questions. Can I trust them? Can I rely on them? But I figured out, Rain that we're asking ourselves those same two questions every day. Can I trust myself? Can I rely on myself? One of the most toxic things I believe that we can do for ourselves is to say we're going to do something and not do it. Well, and that's the problem with willpower, because, and I'm glad you brought that up, because I think so much of this morning routine nonsense is like, you know, I do this weight workout and I do a cold plunge and then I run,

and then I meditate on top of a tree and people think that they have to have this kind of like David Goggins like willpower and then I run 27 miles. And for me, I know, like my willpower is really good for a New Year's resolution, and it's really good for about two and a half weeks. And then it just, and then it peters out. That's why you have to make it easy. It's something called the motivation wave in the research, right? Motivation goes up and motivation goes down.

New Year is the prime example of this. People wake up on January the 1st, and they're like, right, this year is gonna be different from every other year. Why? I'm not taking a different approach, but I think if I want it more, it's gonna happen. Right. This is the year I'm gonna lose 15 pounds.

Yeah, for most people, it doesn't happen. It does for some people, but generally speaking, it doesn't happen for most people. Now, one of the reasons is that we overly rely on motivation and willpower. So we think it's gonna last forever, and it doesn't. So, if you say, I'm gonna spin for one hour four times a week this year, you may well do it for two weeks. But then what's gonna happen is that you had a busy day, you come back home, like, you you're tired. You've got some emails to do. You're like, oh man, I said to go to the gym for an hour. I can't be bothered. It's too much. If you make something easy, you'll do it when your

motivation and willpower is high. You'll also do it when your motivation and willpower is low. I'm a busy guy like many people rain. I cannot ever say in the morning, I don't have five minutes today. I really can't. I've always got those five minutes. And people genuinely do not understand in my, in my clinical experience, most people don't understand that one small five-minute action, if you do it consistently, it will change your life. Wow. Because you start to say to yourself each morning, I can trust myself, I can rely on myself. Even if I'm busy, you show yourself with real world evidence, oh yeah, I still found time

for me. powerful. And so going back to this anxiety question, there are a number of modalities that can help with anxiety, right? Loring your stress in some way is going to help. Journaling can help some people. Meditation can help some people. High intensity exercise can help some people, right? But I think more powerfully is this idea that if I do something small each day for me, even if I'm busy, I give myself a sense of control over what. the world. And if you have a sense of control over your world, you're going to feel less anxious. That's beautiful. The experiencing of discomfort is what we've always done as humans. Always.

You know, life used to be uncomfortable every day. And what I mean about that is we had to, for example, get up. We had to go and move our bodies to acquire food. We had to bring that food back. We had to then cook it, whatever it might be. We had to do these things. And let's contrast that with, how we live today, where in theory, if you have the resources, you could literally stay in your bed. Pick at your smartphone. In your pajamas. In your pajamas, if they fit you, right? And you could literally order whatever you wanted. You could have a delicious, tasty, hot meal

that's brought to you. Yep. And you can eat it. So you can feed yourself. You can set the comfort settings on your nest, on your home, to your, you know, your, you know, turn up your temperature. Yeah. And you've got to understand that people, like, people often feel guilty about this. And there's no need to. Like, we are hardwired to seek comfort.

That's what has moved humanity forward. That's why we have these beautiful, air-conditioned apartments now. We have the ability to have food delivered and cooked and brought to us. You know, we, you know, on so many ways, comfort has helped enhance our experience of day-to-day life, but it's come at a cost. So, in the chapter on discomfort, I make the case that most of the conditions we now see and the symptoms we struggle with are in many ways a direct consequence of our comfortable lives. Let's take something that's very common, type 2 diabetes, right? Type 2 diabetes simply does not exist, at least to nowhere near the same degree in traditional societies. In a society where your daily life is a bit uncomfortable, you're not a very much.

don't get tired of diabetes. You can only get it in a comfortable world. And so the whole message there is, and it relates to cold plunges and anxiety, right? It's this idea that we need daily discomfort in our lives. It's who we are as humans. We don't do well if our lives are super comfortable. We get lazy. We start to procrastinate. We can start to get anxious. And so I think one of the most powerful things people can do for themselves is to think about how am I going to embrace discomfort today? Right? Now, this doesn't have to be a huge thing, right? I always try and simplify and make things practical for people. I have in that chat a series of what I call discomfort rules, right? I say, have a look at them, use them to inspire you or make it

your own. But there's something quite powerful about a rule because it helps reduce decisions. in the moment. Right? I'll give you an example of what I mean. A few years ago, I thought, okay, what discomfort rule can I introduce into my life that makes sure that each day I'm getting a bit of discomfort? And it was to always take the stairs. Right. So I have a rule, an internal rule, that I will always take the stairs unless there's a damn good reason not to. And it sounds really minor. But the impact on my life has been profound. Because what it means is if I go to our local supermarkets in the northwest of England, the car park is on the second floor. I never take the lift. Never take the lift because I've made a decision. I'm always going

to take the stairs down. I do my shopping. I carry it up. If I'm checking into a hotel and they point me to the escalators or the lift, I'm like, excuse me, where are the stairs? Oh, actually, the stairs are always dark and dingy actually as it happens, which is one of the defined, yeah. Yeah. But the point is, is that by having that discomfort rule, it means I'm regularly moving my body, which is good for my physical health and my mental health.

But I'm not having to think about it all the time, but I think it goes beyond the physical benefits that I get. I think it shows me that I'm a resilient human being. The psychological benefits are much greater for me, because I'm choosing to take an uncomfortable option when a more comfortable option exists. So I'm reminding myself who I am as a human. I'm robust. I'm resilient. I can deal with discomfort because I can have a comfortable life.

I do have a nice comfortable house. I can drive somewhere in my car and go to a nice cafe or whatever it might be, right? So it's nice to remind me, coal plunges, right? People can talk about, and I'm not like, pro or anti-cold plunges. I'm like, if it works for you and you like it, great. If you don't, I don't think you have to do it. There's many other practices that can help you. Yeah. Right? But people will go, yes, well, a cold plunge does this to your dopamine

and this to your noradrenaline and whatever it might be. And I've seen that research and sure, some of it's convincing, some of it not so convincing for me. But I don't think the benefits are primarily physical. I think they're psychological. Right? I think they show you, you know, it doesn't even have to be an ice, you know, I'm in LA, the kind of coal plunge center of the world at the moment, right?

It could even be the end of your hot shower. each day, if you take a shower, that you just for 10 seconds make it a little bit cold. Those things are so powerful, rain, because they teach you that you can handle discomfort. And going back to anxiety, when I was writing this book, I reflected back on my career and many of the patients that I've seen over the years. And I think many of them had a low-grade anxiety, and it was built on this kind of foundation of fragility. Now, what I mean by that is this, We live these comfortable lives. And so I think because we're not regularly testing ourselves

and showing ourselves that we can deal with discomfort, we get anxious. Right? Some of us, we get anxious. Because we haven't tested ourselves. So we know if things go wrong, as they could do, right? And there's a chat to call expect adversity. We don't know that we can handle it because we haven't practiced handling hard things.

Why I think so many of the youngsters these days are struggling, it's because they're not testing themselves. They're not showing themselves that, I can handle something that's a bit difficult. Because it's the principle, if you regularly handle things that are difficult, if you practice like these mini adversities, this mini level of discomfort, when real life discomfort comes,

you are much better able to handle it. Does that all make sense? That does make sense. And for me, it's very much in my study of Buddhism, which I try and read something from the Buddhist canon, the Damapadas, especially the writings of the Buddha, around suffering, you know, every week or every month because that rule number one is there is suffering or life is suffering. There is suffering in the world. And it is our attachment that creates most of this suffering. And I do think that young people could greatly benefit from this. You're speaking a little bit more from a psychological level and on a physiological level

and what it does in the brain and to the amygdala and whatnot, but also on a spiritual level. To understand that bad things happen, bad things happen to good people. Pets die. There are fires and people lose their houses. People get sick. and this is part of the human experience. And it's easy to say, you know, it's easy to say, you know, sitting outside of it, if someone has gone through great tragedies,

and I know people who've lost their children from, you know, brain tumors. And it's horrific. And I'm not sitting here on some, you know, ivory tower looking down on people that have had great suffering. But it's so important. to expect adversity and to understand discomfort in order to live a full, rich life. Yeah, I completely agree. One of the things that I noticed

that you and I have in common is in the last 10 years or so, we lost our fathers. And for me, that was an incredibly profound experience. It's one of the experiences that prompted me to write the book Soul Boom, that kind of direct experience with mortality that I had not experienced before, you know, luckily for me. My father was the most important person in my life.

My mom left when I was about two, so I stayed with my dad, so we were very, very bonded. We went through a lot together. We certainly had years and years of a very difficult conflict, but he was also a great spiritual teacher for me. He was a great artistic guide for me. and I've shared this before. He had some qualities about him that were absolutely inspiring

on the deepest possible level that I didn't get to appreciate until after he passed. Yeah. So one of the things that my father did when I think back on it is every room he went into, he made a better place.

So we talk about how to make the world a better place. What about making a room? room a better place. What does that mean to uplift people, to connect with people, to make them laugh, to bring joy, to bring a brightness, to bring curiosity, to listen, to truly listen to someone else that you're coming into contact with. And I have, you know, posthumously learned from his example. Just, and that's one small area. And I still connect with him. I commune with him, with his spirit, with his being, with his energy. And I'm just wondering, I know how important your father was, also a medical doctor,

and what an important role he played in your life. Tell us about your experience with your father and then losing your father and how that's shifted your heart. First of all, Rayne, I'm sorry about your dad's. I'm just going to phrase it that my father died. And what I mean by that is I used to also say I lost my father but I once spoke to the incredible therapist

Julius Samuel in the UK about grief and one of the things that came up in that conversation was this idea that we we use these kind of words to kind of separate death and you know there's a whole section in this book on death actually and that expected

diversity chatter because the ultimate form of diversity is death. I no longer say I lost my father because I think that softens what happened. I now, since that conversation with Julia, always say my father died. Because then I bring it right here. So that's, for me, that's how I phrase it now. I resonate with so much of what you just said about your dad. I really do. That was a huge part of my life.

I still feel I have a relationship with my dad today. it's just different. As I think I mentioned right at the start, Dad was an immigrant to the UK and searched for a better life and he worked himself quite literally to death. And what I used to say, Rayne, is that dad got confused

between happiness and success. But he thought that more money, more well-being for us, better education, better accommodation for his family back home in India would make him and everyone around him happy. And unfortunately, he sacrificed his health and then his life in that pursuit. But I've changed my mind.

I've updated my view. If my dad was alive today, the one question I'd ask dad is, was it worth it? Because I've realized that I cannot judge my dad's experience through my lens. Yes, being a carer for 15 years was tough on my mum, my brother, me, my dad being sick for 15 years and being on a dialysis machine, that was tough.

Horrible, I'm sure, in so many ways. But, you know, on this show, you talk all about meaning and purpose, right? Over the last few months, I've been really reflecting on dad, I thought, well, that's purpose, I think. I don't even know that term back then. I didn't talk to Dad about this kind of stuff back then. If Dad's purpose was, I'm going to provide my family with a better life, well, maybe he did it.

Yeah. And maybe Dad would say, I'd do it all again. Maybe Dad would say, yeah, I'm happy to have sacrificed my health because look what I did back home. And look at you two today. Look at you, Rangan. I gave you a great education, a great start in life. And look at you now and all the success you're having and you're helping now, maybe not quite yet

100 million people, but you're helping probably hundreds of thousands and millions of people around the world live better lives. This kind of relates to that whole Edith Eager idea that we can reframe anything in our minds. I can either look at that in a sad way, in a bad way, or I go, no, dad met his purpose. Yeah, it cost him his life, but he did it. He gave us that better life. And it's a much more empowering way to look at my dad's life now. For me, I've also reframed my dad's death as a bad thing. Again, it relates to what you said about my son's experience and my dad's experience early one at this conversation. I honestly now, hand-on heart, see my father's death as a gift. It's a gift that he gave to me. Because the truth is,

until my dad died, I never, ever started asking myself the big existential questions. I didn't think death applied to me or my family until my dad died. It's the first time I had to come face to face with death. Yeah. And I remember in the months after dad's death, because I used to care for dad. I lived five minutes away. I would see him every day. And so when dad died, there was a huge hole in my life. And I'd go for long walk sometimes, I just think. And at one point, I started asking myself the question, whose life are you really living wrong? And is it your life or someone else's And the truth is, that journey of stopped looking outside and externally for answers, Dad's death was the first time I turned it around and started looking inward and going,

oh, where do your beliefs come from? Why do you think that you need to do this in order to be successful or loved? And I've learned some of the most powerful lessons in my life through my dad's death. So if Dad was alive now, A, I would be so busy caring for him, I wouldn't be able to be able to do any of the things that I am doing, firstly. But I think secondly, more profoundly, I wouldn't know what I know if my dad was still alive. I've learned these truths that I've used in my life and I've shared in my book. I've learned those truths through my father's death. So I feel dad gave me that gift through him dying. And funny enough, as I've become more spiritual

the last couple of years, and I have these deep meditation practices, and I really try and tune into not what is the focus of my awareness, but, you know, who is it that is noticing what I'm focusing on, right? That sort of calm behind everything, that I can now see my thoughts and feelings as passing in front of me. As I've got more tuned into this, what some spiritual teachers, I guess, would talk about through the lens of consciousness, I feel my dad around me all the time more profoundly than ever. And arguably, I've got a closer and more intimate connection with my father now than I did when he was alive.

That's beautiful. That's beautiful. I completely, completely relate to that. And for my father, who always struggled to be an artist, he wanted nothing more than to be an artist. He wrote books. He painted really beautiful, abstract oil paintings. but he didn't get any support from his family

around being an artist for him to take his one son and say you can be an artist, I believe in you, you're going to go on your path, you're brilliant, you're going to find your voice as an actor, as a theater artist and on film and television. What an incredible gift that was to me and the sacrifices he made to help me live this life. And I, like you, feel closer to him.

now than I ever. Isn't that incredible? Than I ever did. Yes. And feel his presence in so many ways. Not like a woo-woo spirit ghost necessarily, although sometimes I feel his voice near me, but his beingness and the gift that death gave. When we say that we can feel our dads around us, again, that can be interpreted in many different ways. It can also be that you've learned things or you can appreciate your father's life now in a way that you couldn't or I couldn't before. You know, as you get older, certainly in my experience, as a parent now, my kids are 14 and 11. I'd have such a greater appreciation of my dad and my mom for that matter and what they did for me and how they did

it. Like, you sort of take it for granted until you're in that position yourself and like, oh, wow, man, how did you do that year after year? And I used to feel sad in the early years when, you know, dad died in 2013, I get my BBC One show in 2014. It airs in 2015, 2017, my first book in 2018. And back then, I used to think, oh, wow, all the things that my dad would have been most proud of, you know, as an Indian immigrant to the UK, to have his son become a doctor and then have his own show on BBC television, that would be unthinkable for someone like my dad. Honestly, that would be like, no, that doesn't happen to people like us sort of thing. And I used to feel sad that dad never got to see that. But I don't anymore. I think dad probably is seeing it

and being a part of it. But like he's also, I don't know, I think it's the gift he's given me. Like, I wouldn't have done that. You know, the first book, this is my sixth one, my first one was dedicated to my dad. I mean, he's interwoven in everything that I do. So, is he dead? Well, I guess technically his body doesn't appear to be here, and I can't go around and sit. And while he's watching the six o'clock news, come and sit and have a cup of tea with him and chat. I can't do that.

But I still have a relationship with him. It's just very different. Rangan, it's such a pleasure to have a pleasure to have a lot of you. gotten to know you and to speak with you today um you are gonna you are gonna hit that number you're gonna hit the hundred million mark i know you are and this book is going to make a big impact as is your podcast right now appreciate you invite me onto your show it's been a real honor to come here and i've thoroughly enjoyed our conversation thank you so much now get out of here we're good the soul boom podcast subscribe now on youtube spotify apple podcasts and wherever else you get your

podcasts.