The Life Of Bryony - 31: ‘Stop Fixing Symptoms—Start Understanding Yourself’ with Dr Rangan Chatterjee

Episode Date: January 13, 2025

Welcome to The Life of Bryony. Where we explore life’s messier moments. MY GUEST THIS WEEK: DR RANGAN CHATTERJEE This week, I’m joined by the incredible Dr Rangan Chatterjee— bestselling author and host of the Feel Better, Live More podcast. Dr Chatterjee shares his wisdom on how to create meaningful and lasting change without falling into the trap of quick fixes or guilt-driven resolutions. His new book, Make Change That Lasts, is packed with practical tools for breaking free from unhelpful habits and building a life rooted in self-compassion and purpose. In this episode: • Why most New Year’s resolutions fail and what to do instead. • How to stop relying on guilt and shame to fuel change and start leading with self-love. • The importance of understanding the role behaviours play in our lives and how to address their root causes. • Why trusting yourself is the key to sustainable well-being. Whether you’re looking to start fresh this year or simply want to approach change in a kinder, more realistic way, this conversation is full of inspiring insights and practical advice. Let’s Stay in Touch 🗣️ Got something to share? You can text or send me a voice note on 07796657512—just start your message with LOB. 💬 Or use the WhatsApp shortcut - https://wa.me/447796657512?text=LOB 📧 Prefer email? Drop me a line at [e-mail] If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with someone who might need it—it really helps! Bryony xx Presenter: Bryony Gordon Guest: Dr Rangan Chatterjee Producer: Jonathan O’Sullivan Executive Producer: Mike Wooller A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Life of Briny, the podcast where we chat about all the messy, beautiful, frustrating bits of life and how to make them a little bit brighter. Today I'm joined by someone who's dedicated his life to helping others achieve lasting, meaningful change. It's the incredible Dr. Rangan Chatterjee. I think the more useful question is not which expert should I trust. It's why do I no longer trust myself? Dr. Rangan is a GP, bestselling author and podcast host known for his revolutionary approach to health and wellbeing. His new book, Make Change That Lasts, is all about ditching the quick fixes and finding what really works. So if you've ever felt stuck, lost or just need a nudge in the right

direction, this one's for you. Guys, this week we're trialling a new thing which is Jonathan, the producer, talking to me. We got some feedback essentially for the Life of Briny. The listener said needs less briny. Needs less briny? Yeah, on the Life of Briny. What, more Jonathan?

Yeah, exactly. They said anyone. So is it now called the Life of Jonathan, rackets and briny? It's actually briny-n-friends. N-friends? Yeah, you know, apostrophe n, apostrophe. Briny-n-friends. N-friends. Oh, I love it. I'm not sure if I should say that. It's actually briny n friends. You know the... N friends? Yeah, you know apostrophe n apostrophe.

Briny n friends. N friends. Oh, I love it. I'm back. I'm not in Dubai anymore, which is a shame. You have a gorgeous colour though for those of you who are just listening but not seeing. You look great. I've got a little glow to me, but not at the expense of my skin because I slather myself in factor 50.

Very important. I don't want anyone thinking that I'm condoning or promoting. Reckless tanning. Reckless tanning. Can I ask you, going from holiday to work, how was the transition? I have to tell you that there was a moment on the platform at Gatwick Airport train station at 7.30 on Saturday morning.

It was like I looked out onto the tracks and it was like I was looking out onto a frozen wasteland. I mean, it was really cold. And obviously, me and my daughter, we hadn't bought coats because we were going to Dubai. So it was just like, why do I live here? But I also, it has its bonuses. I did quite like getting home and then being like, why do I live here? But I also, it has its bonuses. I did quite like getting home and then being like, oh, I'm just gonna snuggle up on the sofa and watch some telly and I don't have to go out. When's this going out?

This going out Monday morning. Monday. Which one's Blue Monday? It's either today or it's next week. Whatever it is, Blue Monday is bollocks. It's genuinely cooked up by the travel industry to get you to book holidays. It was a marketing ploy that got picked up by the newspapers and now has become a thing. And it's unhelpful. I find all Mondays

quite tough, you know, but like, because there's just so much week ahead of you. It's got all that week. tough, you know, but like, because there's just so much weak ahead of you. It's got all that weak. Yeah. January, but Blue Monday. Listen, I think it's unhelpful as well, because there will be people for whom this notion that depression or anxiety or mental illness is affected by a day of the week or a day of the month. Like, obviously, we do know that people suffer from seasonal affective disorder. That's a real thing. But, you know, it sort

of makes light of a condition that, you know, is not always tied to the seasons. You know, I think when people go, oh, I find January so depressing, I think that that can be quite hard for people who suffer from depression and who are like, it doesn't make a fucking difference what the weather's doing outside. That does not influence how they feel in their ability to get up and out of bed. Look, there is no time that it is good to be depressed, let me tell you. But I find that when it gets really stuck in for me, it's July and everyone is out having a good time and I can't get, you know, if I can't motivate myself then it's really hard. So I just wanted to kind of acknowledge that

for people who perhaps find all this talk of Blue Monday or, you know, or what a depressing month it is. There's loads of people that love January. I've actually noticed a lot of people, like in my messages with people, like, how are you doing? And they're like, actually, I really like January. I like, I like there being structure. I like being like, right, I'm going to eat some green things after several weeks of eating only like pigs in blank here.

And I feel fresh. And I think that's a really interesting thing. You don't have to hate January. No, and I think there's a kind of social contract that not many people have plans or not many people make plans as well, which is quite liberating. That is totally liberating. I can just stay in.

I think that is, as I like as a person, is like there is no pressure to be outside, to be out, having talked about all that. There is no pressure to be social, to be out having talked about all that. There is no pressure to be like socializing or meeting up with people. You know, you can just hunker down and do you. And I think that's a really nice thing. You know, like life is what you make of it.

If we all every morning woke up and were like, and our moods were entirely dictated by the weather, we'd be fucked, wouldn't we? Living in the UK. And I think it's like, well, it's fucked, wouldn't we, living in the UK? And I think it's like, well, it's rainy, fine. Do you know what I mean? I'm going to get out there. What I'm getting, the key message

that I'm getting from you, Briony, is that don't let an external source dictate your mood, almost. Is that it? Yeah. I think that's it. Don't let external sources dictate your moods. You just do you.

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So for January, the life of Briny is championing New Year, Same Brilliant You. While everyone else is busy making resolutions and trying to reinvent themselves, we're flipping the script and focusing on finding love and appreciation within yourself. This is about embracing the brilliance that already exists within you and letting it shine in every part of your life. Week 2 is all about being kind to our minds. I'm joined by the incredible Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, GP, bestselling author and host of the wildly popular podcast Feel Better, Live More. His new book, Make Change That Lasts, is packed with practical tools to help you break free from habits that hold

you back and create lasting transformation in your life. In this episode we'll talk about letting go of perfection, overcoming the need to please everyone, another ooo, and learning how to be kinder to ourselves. Massive ooo. I don't know why I'm oooing, I just am. It feels like the energy we need right now. Anyway, enjoy my chat with Dr. Rangan Chatterjee. Brian. Brian. Thank you. I'm so excited that you're on my podcast.

I'm also a bit nervous because you are a podcast legend. Don't be nervous. I'm excited about your show. I love you. I love what you do. So I can't wait for this conversation. OK, so make change that lasts. What I love about this book is that it's not called make change that lasts until the second week of January when you fail and feel completely miserable.

Exactly. Does it? End of broadcast. I think what's inferred in the title, Bryony, is what everyone kind of knows about themselves, which is we can all make changes. But sometimes those changes... Only last for 10 minutes. Yeah. In January, let's say, very few of them actually make it to the end of January, right? Let alone beyond. But many people can make changes for a few weeks, for a few months, but they can't make them last. And I believe that's because they don't get to the root

cause. And that's why I wrote this book. Okay. So what I love about this book and what you get in really quickly, and I think is the key of this book that makes it different to so many other self-help books that come out in this kind of January, New Year. So we are doing this thing on the show, on the podcast that everything this January is not new year, new you, it's new year, same brilliant you. And it's about focusing on the good things and bringing them out. And what I love about this book, it's not about punishing yourself for the things that you can't do. So you talk about a GP friend of yours at the beginning, who was trying to tell a patient about that

he needed to take his diabetic medication and all of this. And he said, why should I listen to you? Because you're fatter than I am. And she sort of went into this spiral. A lot of stuff at this time of year is about cutting things out. It's actually, it's essentially about punishing yourself. But this book is not about punishing yourself. It's about understanding yourself

and what makes you reach for those things. And in my experience of having to get, my whole life has just been a series of having to give things up. You know, I've had to give up alcohol, I've had to give up drugs, I've had to give up cigarettes, I've had to, you know, make change that lasts and not just for January, but for prolonged period of times. And the only way you do that is by going upstream or downstream and seeing why you carry out that behaviour. Yeah, I mean there's so much to say there. Okay, so why did I open the book with that

story of my GP friends? Because I think people are going to resonate with this idea that most of us already know what we could be doing to improve our lives. So why is it that we're not doing it? So that GP was a real expert in type 2 diabetes. She had a patient who she was trying to say, hey, too much sugar, too much ultra processed foods is not going to be helping you. And yeah, the patient just said to the GP, to my friend, why should I listen to you, you're fatter than I am. Now we can get into a debate whether the patient should or shouldn't have said that, but that's

not the point I'm trying to make. The point is, is the GP knew everything that there was to know about the changes, right? But I met her that weekend because she was really struggling with this. And she said, Rangan, you know what? The patient was absolutely right. I can't argue. And what the patient didn't know is that while I was talking to him about his diet, in my drawer, I had a whole load of packets of Cadbury's giant buttons.

As all the best people do. Well, yeah, but the point being, knowledge is not enough. OK, but this is the thing. Knowledge is not power. It's not power. We all say, knowledge is power. It's like, well, hold on a minute. There's a lot of external knowledge in the world out

there. I would argue that today in 2025, there's never been more information out there about health. Podcasts, books, TV, online blogs, right? We all know what we should be doing, but despite all that knowledge, physical health is getting worse, mental health is getting worse.

So why is that? Knowledge is not enough, at least not external knowledge. What we need more of is internal knowledge. We need to know ourselves. Like you said, we need to understand ourselves. And so you mentioned before about this idea on your show at the moment about it's not New Year, New You, right? It's about celebrating you and who you are. Another idea that I think

about a lot is that every behavior, Bryony, either comes from the energy of love or the energy of fear. We don't often think about that. You don't often hear doctors like me talk about things in this way. But what's downstream from fear? Guilt, shame, self-punishment. I'm not good enough, right? The reason that up to 80% of New Year's resolutions don't last, or one of the reasons I should say is because our behaviors are coming from that energy of fear. We don't feel good enough. We try and guilt and shame ourselves into change.

That will not last in the long term. It's not a sustainable energy source. When your behaviors come from the energy of love, and I know for a British audience, so maybe that's hard to hear, we don't tend to talk about ourselves in those terms. But when you, maybe it's a bit more powerful to say, when you like yourself, okay?

That energy, what comes from that? Like joy, compassion, integrity. And compassion is the word, because I think a lot of people try to engage in behavior change by shaming themselves. I did. Yeah. It doesn't work.

I'll give you a prime example, right? Thinking that knowledge is enough, right? Maybe even five years ago, I had the harshest negative inner voice. I don't anymore, right? And I explain in the book how I've changed all these things, right? Because I really have, it's possible to change these things. I would read all the research on meditation and go, right, that's it wrong,

and you are nailing meditation this year, right? You know it's gonna improve your focus, your concentration, your sleep. And I'd say, right, 20 minutes a day. And on January the 1st, I would start. And by January the 20th, or maybe by the middle of January- I was gonna say that long.

That's a long time, yeah. I would have missed a day. I would have been busy one morning That's a long time, yeah. I would have missed a day. I would have been busy one morning. I thought I don't have time for 20 minutes a day. And then later on that day, I would have gone, yeah, you challenged me, you couldn't do it, could you? Another year, you botched it up. You said you were gonna do it, you couldn't do it.

And I berate myself. And so before you know it, that is a behavior that you used to do. I don't have that relationship anymore with myself. So now I do meditate on most days, not for 20 minutes, for about 10 minutes, but not every day. If I miss a day, I go, oh, that's interesting. You know, actually, I'm a better human being when I manage to do it. I'm kinder, I'm more present, I'm less reactive.

Tomorrow, I must make sure I want to get up, I do it. It's a very different relationship with that same behavior. So, Ronnie, one of the big ideas in this book is that too often we try and change the behavior without understanding the role that that behavior plays in our life. And that's why I can stick to my meditation practice now because it's not guilt and shame. It's love, it's compassion. It's like, no, that's a gift that I give to myself when I'm able to do it.

And when I don't, I'm not gonna beat myself up. I'm gonna go, oh, wow. Yeah, I'm actually better when I do it. I must get back to that tomorrow. Very, very different. It's that idea, isn't it? You give something an hour of your day and it gives you 23 back.

For me, I've had to think about it as a balance between discipline and compassion. Yeah. Because- Compassionate discipline. Compass about it as a balance between discipline and compassion. Yeah. Right? Compassionate discipline. Compassionate discipline. I might write that down. Maybe we should write that book together for 2026.

Yeah, go right. I like it. So let's do it. It's compassionate discipline. Yeah. But it is that balance. Yeah. And I think when people don't have that, they have these toxic energies behind their behavior,

which is why they don't last. Because if you think about it on another level, if you just zoom out for a minute, we all want to feel well. We all want to have energy and vitality and we want to look after ourselves. That should be one of the most naturally easy things to do. I think that one of the main reasons we don't is because of the relationship we have with ourselves. We're trying to use our behaviors, especially in January, to overcome the person who we believe ourselves to be. But if you believe that you're useless and worthless, those behaviors will not last.

You'll always come back. The other way I try and explain it to people is, I don't know, we're having this conversation in January, right? So I imagine there's many people listening now who are possibly trying to reset their relationship with, let's say, alcohol or sugar. Right? Two common things. There will be people listening to this podcast in particular who are trying to reset their relationship with alcohol, I'm sure of it.

Right. Fine. So let's use alcohol as an example. What often happens in January is people want to go cold turkey, right? They've maybe had a few too much. They've enjoyed the festive excesses, let's say, For example, what often happens in January is people want to go cold turkey, right? They've maybe had a few too much, they've enjoyed the festive excesses, let's say, and they're trying to rebalance on January the 1st and go, right, I'm just cutting it out, I'm doing dry January. I appreciate that can work for some people, okay, first thing to say. But I found over the years with my patients that those changes rarely stick for most people

and the reason I believe that to be the case is because people don't understand or they haven't taken the time or been taught how to understand the role that that behavior plays in their lives. So once you understand that every single behavior you do has a role and serves a purpose, your life starts to change. So very simply, if your way of managing the stress in your life is by drinking alcohol, you can stop for 30 days in January, but you will always return back unless one of two things has happened. Either the amount of stress in your life has had to have gone down, much easier said than done, or you need

to find an alternative behavior to alcohol to manage that stress. Now when I say it like that, I think it sounds quite obvious. But I think when we actually look at our behaviours, we go straight to the behaviour. Oh, alcohol is the problem, I need to cut back on alcohol. I'm saying, hold on a minute, let's get behind the behaviour and then you'll find the behaviour starts to slip away naturally. The alcohol, the cabries, whatever the behaviour is, is a symptom of a deeper malaise often. Yeah, and I would say, you know, I've been a medical doctor since 2001, and one of my frustrations with how we as a profession deliver public health messaging is that I think it's

too dry. I don't think it engages people. So we'll say 14 units of alcohol or you should do moderate activity 30 minutes, five days a week. Like I understand that it might be factually correct, but I just find these really dry, unemotional terms, right? We as a profession, I think, also focus too much on the behavior. Right? Most people who are listening to this right now, Brian, if they're drinking excess alcohol or having excess sugar, I think most of them know that. Yeah, of course. We all know that these things are-

So they don't need another book saying, excess sugar is going to do this to you, excess alcohol is going to do this to you. I'm not saying knowledge is not important. Of course, it's necessary, but I would say a lot of people have that external knowledge. What they don't have is the internal knowledge, and that's where the gold comes. I remember one of the first times I met you, and I think it was back in sort of 2017, 2018, and we were on a panel together, and you started talking.

I really remember this very clearly about, you must, you're probably still practicing as a GP at the time. I forgot then I was, yeah. And you spoke about, I think it was like a young boy coming in to your surgery and him giving you, he was depressed, you know, and that your ideal thing was that you would be able

to spend the time with that boy to find out what was going on in his life, what was going on in the background, how can we change the things that are leading to this depression? And it was really a holistic thing you were engaging in. And I remember sitting there and I remember thinking, God, that is ideally how the NHS would be run in terms of mental health services,

how GP services would be run. It's that, you know, in that way that I think actually we think of GPs back when I was a kid in the 80s, the time that you can spend with them to understand each patient and develop a relationship, that's gone, hasn't it, very much? It has gone, unfortunately. And that's one of the reasons I think I spend so much energy writing these books or recording my podcast is because I think a lot of people are not getting that from their doctor. I'm not blaming the doctors, okay, just to be really clear. I think it's very hard in the current system in the UK for any doctor to give their patients

the kind of time that are necessary. What a lot of people don't realize, Brian, is that the health landscape of the UK has changed and many countries around the world dramatically over the last few decades. So 50 years ago, our model where you come in and have 10 minutes with your GP, it actually worked pretty well because most people were coming in for acute problems. Okay, so I thought you had a really bad cough that's not going away, right? You've got a bad chest infection. You come in, the doctor sees you've got a fever, takes your sputum, sends it off, goes,

you've got a fever, takes your sputum, sends it off, goes, you've got a serious chest infection. Here's a pill, take it three times a day for seven days and your problem will disappear. Actually modern medicine is really good at that. The problem is that now the vast majority of things that are coming into doctors are driven by our collective modern lifestyles. Okay. I'm not putting blame on people to be really clear. I'm saying the way we live today. I'm not putting blame on people to be really clear. I'm saying the way we live today is not healthy. It's not healthy. It is toxic. Ill health is a natural consequence of this quite toxic capitalist society in which many of us live. So that model of 10 minutes where you come in, talk about your problem, get a pill, it doesn't work because these problems need us to look at multiple

aspects of your lifestyle. And they can't be cured with a pill. You might be able to temporarily reduce a symptom. Numb. Or numb a symptom, but you won't get to the root cause. And I believe that every single person listening to this right now can make transformative change in their life that lasts. I have seen patients in the darkest of places turn their lives around. Right, so I believe it's possible for every single person, but the only way you'll do that is by getting to the root cause.

And that's, I think, one of the reasons this new book is already proving so popular with people is because it helps them understand themselves. I think there's another reason, which is that you talk about experts a lot in this and how there are so many and you've alluded to that, you know, there's podcasts, there's books, there's television, there's everything. You have that quite rare mixture of having expertise, as in, you know, you have proper

medical training, but also you have experience, I think, and you bring that to what you do. And when I first met you, I thought he's really put together, really Zen, really, you know, and actually the more that I've chatted to you over time, I realized that a lot of this stuff is hard won, and it's stuff that you've experienced yourself and you've had to implement in your own life. And I wanted to talk to you a bit about that because what comes through in the book and in our conversations we've had is that, you know, you're how old are you now? 47.

47. But you know, the kind of that Zen sense of things being good, it hasn't always been that way. Absolutely not. I mean, I mentioned that meditation, sort of my relationship with it, let's say five years ago. But things have changed. I'm pretty calm these days. Very few things now trigger me or upset me. I really do mean that. But I've done the work. – Your parents were first generation immigrants from India.

– Yeah. – I'm taking you back on a psychotherapy journey now. – Let's do it. Let's do it. So I'll, okay. – They had, you know, like a lot of people, you know, their thing was you're going to do well and we want a better life for you than we've had. You know, I've been very open in this book about various struggles I've had in my life, whether it's to do with my relationship with my wife, whether it's to do with my own beliefs and patterns or whether it was to do with childhood, right? So, firstly, I

love my mum and dad. I think they brought me up really, really well. Well, that's very clear. I don't for a moment. And I think sometimes when we go and explore our past, for me, it's a two-phase process. And I think a lot of people these days get stuck at phase one. I think, yes, go and understand your childhoods, but then move on from it. You might need therapists, you might need help, but don't get stuck blaming your parents. I think a lot of people do that now. There's so much awareness now on trauma and how important our early childhood experiences are.

I choose to believe, Brian, that every single person is doing the best that they can based upon their experiences. Or the knowledge they have at the time. Exactly. And you can look at your own parents through that lens, right? So I think as you get older, for me, you know, my kids are now 14 and 12. I have a much deeper insight as to my parents.

Wow, dad, you left your country, your family in India, everything you knew with nothing, you come to the UK to set up a better life for your family. My God, I've never had to do anything like that. New culture, new language. I'm like, wow, that's incredible. But I still remember, Bryony, coming back from school, maybe six or seven years old, I was so excited.

I got 19 out of 20 in the test. I can still remember, mum and dad would never say congratulations. They would always say, what did you get wrong? Right. Were you top of the class? I said, would always say, what did you get wrong? Right. Were you top of the class? I said, no, I came second. Who came top? Right.

OK. Now, it's easier to go, oh my god, how critical were they? But hold on a minute. Let's understand mom and dad's mentality. They come to the UK in the 1960s and 70s, right? They're facing levels of discrimination and struggle. So the immigrant mentality, certainly I can talk about Indian immigrants

because that's, you know, my family are from the east of India. Their mentality is the way our children don't have to struggle like we do is to excel at school. Be the best. And be the best, right? So it's a cliche, but in many Indian families, like a lot of the kids aren't academically very, very bright. I shouldn't say bright, academically successful. Why? Because it's highly, highly valued at home. It is the top value for many of us. So although I understand why mom and dad did it through their lens, unfortunately Little Rangan took on the belief when he was very young that I have to succeed and be top

dog in order to receive that validation and love that I would be craving as a youngster from my parents. Again, I'm not blaming my parents. I probably went through a phase of being frustrated like many of us do. Very normal. Very normal. You have to go through that, but then you've got to come out the other side and go, no, I understand why they did that.

Now I need to take responsibility and go, if I want to move forward with that, I've got to process it and move on instead of blaming them. And I don't blame them. I get it. If I was them, I would do exactly the same thing. If I'd come to a new country and I was facing that. But what's relevant about that is that I've had all kinds of metrics, tricks of societal success over the last few years, right?

Best-selling book after best-selling book, hit podcast, right? A well-known doctor, whatever, you know, TV show on BBC One. Lots and lots of followers. Or the external validation that you could possibly want. And in some ways, I feel I had to get it to teach me it doesn't make you happy. It doesn't make you happy. It doesn't make you happy. I know it's easy to say that when you've got it, right? I'm aware of people who might be thinking, all right, for you now to say that, yeah,

I get that. I accept that maybe it is easy for me to say that having received it, but I acutely know so well that stuff does not make me happy. And I think in some ways that external success has forced me to go inward and learn a lot about myself. And now I have got to that point where I feel, I kind of feel super calm these days. And I feel happy. And I think being married and having kids for me certainly helps. Would you say you're a recovering perfectionist?

100%. Because perfectionism is so often spoken of as a good thing. The trait of perfectionism has been growing steadily since the 1980s, which is interesting, because I thought when I started looking into this, it's probably gone up because of social media. No, no, this was going on way before that. Really?

Right, it was going up since the 1980s. Now, I think social media has made it worse. But the sort of traits of perfectionism is strongly associated with anxiety, depression, suicide. This is highly, highly toxic and many of us are struggling with it. And I'm very open in chapter two, which is all about this over-reliance on perfectionism. I talk about, you know, I talk about this idea that our heroes are not real. I open that chapter talking about when I was a 14 year old boy, I had literally a

life size flag of John Bon Jovi on my wall. OK, can we just for one second, I was going to talk about this to you later because you wanted to be John Bon Jovi. We're going to we're going to take a slight detour here because I think you have done John Bon Jovi because I saw you on stage at CarFest in August in front of what, 25,000 people? So that's John Bon Jovi. To me, you're my John Bon Jovi. Oh, well thank you, Bryony.

So I guess that was a lot of fun last summer. I've played music my whole life. It's a big part of me and what I've always done. But actually, that John Bon Jovi story, I think many people can relate to their own version of that. So I put John Bon Jovi on a pedestal. Yeah, a lot of us do. Yeah. As a young teenage boy, I'm like, oh my God, if you could be him playing these great concerts, adoring fans, whatever it might be, his life sounds amazing. But as an adult now I can go, yeah, but what's the downside there?

What is the downside of being on the road for 300 nights a year? What was the impact on your marriage, on your ability to be a good father to your kids? I'm not saying, I know, I don't know any of these things, but I understand that everything in life has a cost, right? So you know, and I make the point in that chat, so that all kinds of heroes in society, Michael Phelps, 20 plus Olympic medals. Depression. Depression afterwards.

Johnny Wilkinson, World Cup winner, 10 years of anxiety and depression afterwards. I'm saying that you can't have one aspect of someone's life. If you want to be Tiger Woods, you've got to also take the painkiller addiction, the public humiliation, the marital breakup. You can't have it all. And so that whole chapter is about saying, listen, these heroes that you look up to, whether it be Taylor Swift or John Bon Jovi, they're not real. Right? They're not real in the sense that you are getting a media portrayal of who these people are. You may love Taylor Swift's music, right? You don't know what she's like as a person, as a friend, as a sister, right?

You don't know that. And I think why not so important, there's some exercises in that chapter. One of them is about reframing your relationship with your heroes. Like if you have a hero, actually think about what is it in that hero that you like, okay? Because it's probably something in there that you think you've got on yourself.

Be really specific, write that down. Don't worship the entirety of them, because that's one element that I really like. So for me, for example, Edith Eager, who's a lady who was in Auschwitz, and the conversation I had with her on my podcast is probably the one that has transformed me the most, because she could transform and reframe her experience of life while she was in a death camp. I was not the same person after that conversation as before it. But as I write in my new book, I say, listen, I could use this idea about heroes when I talk about Edith. I don't know what Edith is actually like as a wife, as a mother, as a grandma. I don't know. What I do know and what I respect about her is her ability

to reframe her experience in the darkest of places. Okay, great. Let me take that and work on that quality. And I have, I've literally, if ever I can't reframe an experience in life and I'm tempted to make myself a victim, I go, you know what, Rangan? Edith Eager could see the prison guards in Auschwitz as the prisoners. She was able to reframe her experience

in a concentration camp. You know, in your pretty comfortable life, I think you can reframe this. So I use her as inspiration. So I worship, if worship is even the right word, I look up to one aspect of her, not the entirety of her. ["Spring Day"] I also wanted to talk to you a bit about your experience

of how perfectionism sort of manifested for you while you were a teenager and in your twenties. I would say I've always had addictive tendencies. I've always got really into stuff and just been compelled to keep doing them. And that could be anything. It could be, you know, pool playing, right? Which might not sound a real problem, but if you're playing all the time or you won't play unless you know you can win, that's a pretty toxic relationship. Was that what you were like? It was. I remember, like, often at uni, I was at uni at a medical school in Edinburgh,

and often on a Sunday, after a couple of nights out on Friday and Saturday, a few of us would go to Diane's Pool Hall, right, in the sort of west end of Edinburgh, this really old school pool hall with the jukebox. And we'd go and play pool in the afternoon. And, you know, I fancy myself as a pretty good pool player. And I think I was, okay? And still am. But the point is, is that I can still remember, like playing with one of my best mates, Steve, and as he was ever winning, right, towards the end, I would literally go into the bathroom

and look at myself in the mirror, I'd give myself a slap on the face and say, come on chatty you loser, sort this out. I know that sounds maybe really brutal. I would honestly do that. And it would often work in the sense of it would work to help me come raise my game, win. But what I realized, I didn't realize it then. I realized it when writing my last book, actually, Happy Mind, Happy Life, and I was reflecting on that.

I didn't actually enjoy winning. I just couldn't stand to lose. It's very different. And then I thought, wow, there's so many things in life I would never do because I'm not going to be good at that. So I don't want to do it. It was too painful for me. Then you think about my childhood and what I said before, it all makes sense. Yeah, of course. It all makes complete sense. And so I've constricted my whole experience of life because I needed to be the best. And it's a toxic place to live. And I lived there for much of my life.

So I let go of all of that with a series of different practices, right? I've let go of that. It's not happened overnight. It's not like a January change. This has been going on probably since my dad died. Which was in 2013. 2013, my dad died. That was the first time, Brian, in my entire life,

I think I stopped to ask myself the big questions. Whose life are you actually living? Is it your life? Is it someone else's? I don't think I'd ever done that. Some of my dad died. So I've been on this journey of inner exploration since 2013. And I'm now in 2025 about as happy and as calm as I've ever felt.

But the journey is fun. When I say it's fun, it's the best journey that exists, right? You think you want the quick fix in January, you don't, right? Because it's the journey of the ups and downs of learning about yourself. That's where you get the gold. That's when you learn, oh, this is why this bothers me. We've both got pretty large public profiles today, right? So again, this is not a sob story, to be really clear.

But it comes with a cost, right? You and me can both go online today and see a ton of comments about us, good and bad. Yes. I can go online today, and I find some people saying, wrong, you're the best podcast host on the planet. I can also find comments that I want. People say I'm the most irritating podcast host on the planet.

And you know what? They're both right. They're right. And I'm OK with that. But the point I'm trying to make is, I think having a public profile in 2025 or in the current era, it will either be the fastest track to self-growth

or it would destroy you. Because it's not normal to have that many people comment on you. No. So for me, it's fast track my personal growth, right? Because I've learned that in general, criticism only bothers you to the extent you believe about yourself. Yeah. So instead of blaming that person, and it's easy to go, oh, that person shouldn't be doing

it, I'm saying, is that useful? You can't control whether another person is or is not going to criticize you. If you want to grow, if you want to get that internal knowledge that I've been talking about, that the internal knowledge that's going to help you understand yourself better and then make change that lasts, use that criticism as a learning opportunity. What is this bringing up inside of me? It's life changing. Well, that thing of looking for your part in things.

Yeah. I love it. I always remember I was probably about two years sober and I work a program, right, in the 12-step program and you get given a sponsor and I remember going on holiday and calling the sponsor and going, I'm so furious because work, no know I'm on holiday and yet they're emailing me. How dare they? And she said, well, what's your partner? I was like, I don't have a partner.

I'm just innocently receiving the emails. And she said, why are you checking them? And it was that little sort of thing of like, oh, I've chosen to engage in this. It was a tiny thing. It's tiny, but it's massive. Yeah. It's literally, I would argue, one of the most powerful learnings any one of us can have in life. Whenever there's a situation going on, let me be really clear, right? Because people then go, what about, you know, things like physical abuse and war, right?

I'm not talking about those things. Let's just park that for a minute. In general, for most things, we are contributing in some way. If your boss is constantly emailing you at the weekends and you don't like it, are you constantly replying at the weekends? And once you start to own your part in it, that's when you're really taking responsibility. It doesn't mean nothing's black and white. It's not all them and it's not all you. But you can't control the other person's actions.

You can control your own. And I think a big part of this new book is it's about not blaming the external world for your internal responses. And your life starts to change. So let me give you another real, maybe a really practical example that can help people understand this. Let's say you're driving to work and you're in a rush and someone cuts you up and you're annoyed and you start mouthing off in your heads about that driver you know they can't see they

shouldn't have a license they shouldn't be on the roads okay firstly the other person can't hear you you're just creating all this noise in your car and I used to so I'm not judging anyone for doing this right I used to do this what a lot of us don't realize as I't, is that you don't have to react like that. Right? A lot of us think, oh, the external event happens. The person cut me up. I'm entitled to feel furious. Now, I'm not saying you're not, but the question is, is it useful? You can train yourself to go, oh, in those situations, I'm just going to go, I wonder what's going on for that person. I wonder if their daughter was up with ear rate last night.

I wonder if it's a mom who's been late twice in the past three weeks and she's worried she's about to lose her job if she's late again. Why is that going to matter? I'll tell you why it matters. The title of the book is Make Change Up Lasts. One of the reasons we can't make changes that last is because we don't factor in internal stress. Right, so if you're on the way to work, you've got two scenarios.

One scenario is you got really annoyed and pissed off with that driver, started mouthing off, generated all this emotional stress, you get to work, you have to neutralize that emotional stress in one way or another. Now, you could do it by going for a run, but I tell you, most people are going to the vending machine.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sugar, an extra coffee, an extra bit of alcohol after work. A cigarette. Cigarette, two hours scrolling in the evening. You're doing that to neutralize the emotional stress that you created by the way you interacted with that situation. If you do the exercise in the book and over time you learn how to change that, and you can't do it in the moment straight away, it's too hard, right?

But over time you can. You just stay calm. You go, oh wow, I wonder what happened with that driver. You don't generate that internal stress. You don't need the sugar and the fag and the caffeine. You don't need it anymore because that was a compensation. This is one of the key points I want to share with people is that the way you interact with the world influences your behaviours. Instead of focusing on the behaviour, focus on the way you interact with the world, your behaviour will naturally start

to change. There's a great phrase I heard about that, about that choosing how to respond to it and that if you choose to get really angry at the person who's cut you up, who you'll never see again, it's like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies. Yeah, you're making it, you're basically, and I say this with an open heart, I promise, you're making yourself a victim to the world. That story that I opened the book with about my GP friends whose patient said, why should I listen to you? You're fatter than I am. What a lot of people will do in that situation

is get sidetracked and gossip with their mate, stupid person, they have no right to talk to me, how rude. Hey, listen, I understand that. Sometimes we need to process it, we need to talk to our friends. But what she did when we met up that weekend, she said, the thing is wrong and the patient was right. That's taking responsibility.

I'm not saying that patient should have said that. Yes, of course it would have been better. Well, here's the thing. I was going to say it would have been better had the patient not said that. But would it have been? But would it have been? For my friend, that was the stimulus for change. Well, this is the thing.

If you have the right frame of mind, can be the best thing that happened to you. Exactly. And so I would argue for my GP friend, that was the very best thing that happened to you. Exactly. And so I would argue for my GP friend, that was the very best thing that happened. That patient being honest and direct with her, that was her stimulus for change. And so we can use that with criticism. You mentioned before the chapter on expecting adversity. That's one of my favorite chapters, right?

Because I call it the life is an escalator myth in that chapter, this idea that life is constantly going to keep getting better. Shrinkage as well. Oh, yeah. this idea that life is constantly going to keep getting better. Shrinkage as well. Oh yeah, this idea that our lives are always going to get better and nothing's ever going to go wrong actually trips us up massively. Because then when things go wrong, we get surprised.

We get frustrated. And that frustration causes a lot of our behaviors that we're trying to change, right? So shrinkage is this concept that you get in business, right? So let's say you've got your own supermarket briny, okay? You're a mogul having your own chain of briny Gordon supermarkets, right? Yeah, yeah, that sells Taylor Swift jumpers and merch. CDs and... Merch.

Merch, yeah. And McCoy's crisps. Right. So this is your dream. Okay. Now, if you were going to take advice from other supermarket moguls, they would probably say to you, this is quite a nice thought experiment. I could see you as a supermarket mogul, actually.

Yeah. I mean, I didn't have that on my bingo card for 2025, but let's go with it. Let's go with it. Yeah. By the end of the year. Okay. But these guys, they can wish that no one shoplifted and that none of their stock went off, but they know it's going to happen.

They factor it into the business plan. It's all incorporated. Oh, 5% is going to be shoplifted, 3% is going to go off because people aren't going to buy it and it's passed its use-by dates. They're not surprised. It's factored in. We don't take that approach to life. We get surprised when things go wrong.

And then we get really frustrated. And the two examples... And then we think it's a sign that this is all destined to fail and we should give up. Exactly. And so, no, no, that's just naturally what happens in life. I'll give you one example, right? A few years ago, I've always lived near my parents. I've had elderly parent caring responsibilities. That's I've been about 21.

A few years ago, mum who lives five minutes away from me, she would be falling quite a lot, right? So she would have a, like an emergency call button on her neck, so if she was to fall and she couldn't get up herself, that would get activated. Me and my brother are the calls that they, if she activates that, we get calls basically. I've gone to sleep one night in my house,

which is five minutes away from where mum lives. And I don't know, at some point, maybe 10 o'clock, because I go to bed early, about 10pm, my phone started to ring. I was asleep, I picked it up, basically, your mum's emergency alarm has been activated. We've just spoken to her on the intercom, she can't get herself up. Are you able to come round and help her? I said, yeah, sure, no problem. Please let her know that I'll be there in a few minutes.

So I literally, in my pajamas, half a seat, went downstairs, got my car keys, drove round to my mum's, helped her up, went downstairs, got my car keys, drove around to my mum's, helped her up into her bed, made sure she was okay, took about an hour or so. Once I was happy that mum was settled and safe, I said, hey mum, I'm going to go back now but phone me if anything happens, I'll make sure my phone's on. I got into my car in my mum's drive and I reversed straight out into the parked car on the other side of the street. Now the older version of Rangan would have done this and I suspect most people listening

would do this. Oh, typical. Just can't believe it. I've got all this stuff going on at work. Mum's needs help and now I've got to sort out all this stuff. I've got to phone insurance. I've got to do this. Poor old me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? That self-pity story. Now once you realize you don't have to create that, your life starts to change. Now, because I'd been working on this for a few years, I was really pleased with how I responded. In the moment, I was able to go, oh, well, wrong, listen, no one's hurt, thankfully. I've got insurance.

And if you're going to keep coming around half asleep to help your mum up off the floor, something like this is going to happen, right? If you drive enough times, you're going to have an accident. Doesn't matter how good a driver you are. But the way I interacted with that adverse experience, because I didn't want to crash the car, it would have been better had I not crashed it. But if you go down the self pity narrative, the next day I'm guaranteeing you're having more sugar, more caffeine, more alcohol, more scrolling. Because you feel, oh poor old me, the world's against me and I

understand why people would do that. I've spent a lot of my life doing that. I'm just saying I don't think it's serving you and once you realize that you can learn a different response and go, wow if I keep coming around half asleep it was gonna happen. I remember the next day I just dealt with it and got on with life. I don't need the sugar and all that stuff. They're downstream. Does that all make sense? Yeah, it does. The other thing that I think is really clear in this book is how important open-mindedness is and how important it is to be. And I think this is a really big thing for change that people don't talk about often enough is that we're very reluctant to go, I'm not going to try that.

That won't work for me. You know, we immediately poo poo things. And what you say is that lots of different things work for lots of different people. For some people, it might be yoga. For some people, it might be meditation. For some people, it might be breath work. The thing is might be meditation, for some people it might be breath work. The thing is you just got to go and try it all and be a bit... And, Shams, trust yourself.

Yeah, yes. Right? The whole first chapter, I think, is arguably the most important chapter in the book because I'm saying one of the reasons that people struggle with change now is because we're overly reliant on experts. Yeah. And I say that as a so-called expert myself, right? People are getting confused when experts disagree.

They're DMing me or you're going, I don't know which experts to trust. This expert from Harvard says this diet is best, like a low carb diet. And this expert from a different university says a plant-based diet is best. They both sound respectable and they've both got evidence to support what they're saying. I don't know who to trust. And what I say in the book is, I think the more useful question is not which expert should I trust. It's why do I no longer trust myself?

Both experts can be right for different people. You know, in 23 years of being a Dr. Brighton, I can tell you that one of the most powerful things I've learned is that is no one size fits all. Each and every one of us are different. We respond to different things. There are some frameworks, there are some general principles, but we've lost the art of paying attention. Like, if you're confused about which way of eating you should be implementing in your

life for better health, let's say. Well, you can't decide between the two. Why don't you try both for four weeks each? And whilst you're trying them, pay attention. How do you feel internally? How's your energy? How's your sleep? How's your focus?

How's your gut? Right, how's your bloating? You'll probably realize yourself, actually I do better when I'm on that diet, as opposed to that diet. People are arguing online, they're fighting over different diets. It's like, guys, you can all be right.

Yeah. But maybe your approach, and I think many of us are biased, our approach is the best approach for everyone. Yeah. And what I've learned is that just because something worked for me, it doesn't mean it's going to work for you. We have barely scraped the surface of this book because as you were talking there and I was thinking, there's so many things.

We've not even opened the front cover. We've made change that lasts by Dr. Rongan Chatterjee. Out now. I listen to it. You've been there on some few of my long runs recently. Good to join you. Do I get the benefit, like the fiscal benefit, if I was with you on your run? Your HRV balance has vastly improved. I love it. Thank you.

Massive thanks to Rongan for such an uplifting chat today. I love him. I love him even more now. And if you loved this episode, please share it with a friend who needs a little inspiration and while you're at it, hit follow and leave us a review. It helps us reach more of you lovely lot. So take care, be kind to yourself, and I'll catch you on Friday.