The Wellness Scoop - How to Cultivate Happiness

Episode Date: March 21, 2022

We’re joined by Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, a doctor with over 20 years of experience, as well as an author and podcast host, to discuss why we need to redefine our concept of happiness, the interrelationship of health and happiness, and the simple ways to get back in control of our lives.   We discuss: How happiness and health are linked The difference between core happiness and junk happiness The importance of alignment, contentment and control The want-brain Why success isn’t the source of happiness A simple but powerful exercise to cultivate greater awareness and intention Why self-compassion is at the root of long-term health and happiness The stress response The value of a daily solitude practice Why regularly taking time to reflect is so beneficial The power of taking control of your mindset Rangan Chatterjee: ‘Happy Mind, Happy Life’ https://drchatterjee.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P.com. Hi, I'm Ella Mills, the founder of Deliciously Ella, and this is our podcast, Delicious Ways to Feel Better. Each episode explores various aspects of our mental and our physical health to help you make small, simple changes to your life to feel both happier and healthier. And today we're going to be looking at redefining the concept of happiness to understand what it really is. And this is going to be our last episode before we take a few weeks off for Easter. So I hope you really, really enjoy it.

Junk happiness is what I think a lot of the time we think happiness is. You know, getting drunk with our friends or, you know, spending two or three hours scrolling Instagram or gambling or online shopping. Or, you know, these days it's a huge problem, online pornography. That's the truth. It's, you know, an uncomfortable truth for many people to talk about. But actually, that is on the rise massively and it's causing huge amounts of problems and there's nothing inherently wrong with junk happiness like I'm not saying there's anything wrong with you know occasionally spending two hours scrolling Instagram okay that's fine the problem with junk happiness is if we engage in it for too long too often often. And the problem is, is if we think that's what real

core happiness is, it's not, right? I've got a few junk happiness habits, right? It's like, you know, I'm not saying you're going to be perfect and actually you're going to be like a monk and never ever have any cravings or desires. No, but actually the more you work on your core happiness, you're going to find that you engage in junk happiness habits a lot less, not because you're trying to, but because you no longer have this void inside you that you're trying to fill with those habits. Before we delve into today's episode, I wanted to introduce you to our sponsor and also a little note on sponsors, which is that we'll only be

working with brands that I personally use and personally love and that will never promote something on here that isn't totally authentic or that we don't really really believe in. So for the next few months our podcast sponsor is going to be Simprove, a supplements company that I've been using to support my gut health for about five years now. So I've been using it for years and years before I started working with them. The gut microbiome is made up of trillions of bacteria that support pretty much all aspects of our mental and physical health from digestion to our immune system, energy production and mental health and keeping the right balance of good bacteria in our gut is just so important. Our diet and lifestyles have a huge impact on that but adding

in live bacteria can really help too. The bacteria in Simprove which is a water-based supplement can really survive the long journey from the mouth to the gut where they can then multiply and support our microbiome. I truly swear by it and I hope you love it too. For anyone wanting to try it they've shared a 15% off code with us. So you just need to use Ella15, which is valid on Simprove.com for new customers based in the UK, but they also have a subscribers package if you're an existing customer. So our guest, Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, we've had him before on the podcast, is absolutely fantastic, and I am admittedly a big fan. He's a

doctor with over 20 years experience as well as an author, TV presenter and podcast host. His philosophy is that it's only when we learn how to support our own mental health and well-being and cultivate this idea of core happiness that choosing to live a healthy joyful life becomes genuinely easy and he's on a mission to inspire people to transform their health and happiness by making small, sustainable changes to their lifestyle, which obviously resonates very deeply with me and everything that we do at Delicious Cielo.

In his latest book, Happy Mind, Happy Life, Rangan shares cutting edge insights into the science of happiness and reveals 10 simple ways to put you back in control of your health and your happiness. So I hope you enjoy the episode. And as I said, we'll be off for a couple of weeks over Easter. I hope you'll manage to get a couple of days off and enjoy yourselves. And now I'd love to welcome Rongan to the show. Thank you so much for joining us today. Well, Ella, I've really enjoyed our previous conversations on the show. So the honour's mine.

I'm really, really looking forward to getting stuck in and seeing where this conversation takes us. Both Matthew and I are huge fans of everything you do and the message that you portray to the world. It's obviously incredibly important and really feels that's the case now more than ever. And I know we were talking a minute ago before we started recording about the fact that your new book feels like an amazing evolution of your previous books. And I'd love to understand a little bit more about that journey and about creating Happy Mind, Happy Life. You've obviously written about nutrition, stress, movement. But for you, why was happiness and our misidentification of happiness such an important topic to research and write about? Is that based on personal experience, your work

as a doctor? If I'm honest, it's a bit of both. Yeah, it's definitely informed my personal experience. But you know, as we record this conversation, I've been seeing patients now for almost 21 years. So that's 10s of 1000s of patients. And as we've probably spoken about in the past, I've always looked to try and find what's the root cause of why this person is sitting here in front of me, what's really going on. And for many years, I've said countless times in public that around 80% of what doctors like me see in any given day is in some way related to our collective modern lifestyles. And I absolutely still think that is the case. But I began to wonder, well, what happens to those people who do change their diets, they do move regularly, they do seem to

sleep pretty well every night and have pretty low or manageable levels of stress. Why is it some of these guys are still really struggling? Or why is it that some people can go on some sort of health kick or health plan for a few weeks or maybe two or three months, but then they fall off and end up back to where they were before? And I thought, is there something else going on? Is there something that's even more what I call upstream than lifestyle? And I thought about my patients. I looked into the research. And I'm convinced there is. It's our happiness.

How happy we feel with our lives and in our lives actually is strongly associated with our physical health. So it's really about our mental well-being, how we think, how we approach the world. And I think there is this really underappreciated link, Ella, between happiness and health. So I was literally itching to write this book and get this message out there to the world because I think it's really, really important. I think society doesn't really understand the link between these two things. I don't think within my profession it's widely understood there is a link between these two things. You know, to extend the argument a little bit further, there's two broad reasons, I think, why feeling happier in your life and with your life makes you healthier. The first one, I think, is potentially relatively obvious to people.

When you feel happier, you feel more content, more at peace with your life and what's going on day to day, you're less likely to make unhealthy lifestyle choices. So if you feel pretty good, you're less likely to dive into a tub of chocolate biscuits at 3pm or need to drown out the stress in your life and the sorrow in your life with half a bottle of wine in the evening. You're less likely to need to do that if you feel happier. So I think naturally our lifestyle choices become better. But actually, that's not the only thing. Even when scientists have looked at happiness and health independent of lifestyle, happier people are healthier and they live longer. They did this great study with nuns where they tracked them over the course of their entire life

and they accounted for lifestyle. These nuns had the same lifestyle, same diet, same movement patterns, same amounts of sleep. And despite that, it was the happier nuns who were healthier and they lived longer. So this is this kind of really interesting link that I don't think has been spoken about enough. I want to get this idea out there that happiness is linked to health, but also that happiness is not this kind of ethereal thing that one day you're just going to stumble across. Like, I honestly want to showcase people through this book that happiness is a skill that you can work on, that you can develop. Just as if you go to the gym every day and lift weights, you're going to

get stronger. I make the case in the book that actually, if I can show you some really simple things that if you work on them every day, you are going to find that you feel happier in your life. And then you're going to also find that it helps improve your physical health. I actually wondered if we before we go any further, how do you define happiness? I know that's in some ways is a strange question, but it feels like such a fleeting, intangible concept in some ways. Yeah, Ella, I think that's a great question. And I spent a lot of time trying to get this right in the introduction of the book because I thought happiness is a term that, you know, everyone listening to this right now, Ella, it's going to land with them in a slightly different way. You know, some people are going to think it's about,

you know, having a smile on their face all the time and nothing's going wrong in their life. Someone else is going to have a different view of what happiness is. And I separate happiness into two types in the book. There's core happiness and junk happiness. So core happiness, I think, is what we are all looking for in our life as opposed to junk happiness. And I think happiness has become very, very misinterpreted. So I think a lot of us think happiness is feeling good all the time, is feeling positive all the time. It's that billboard image of, you know, the happy couple smiling on the beach with their kids behind them and the ocean and the beach there. And, you know, we think, oh, that's happiness. That's what I should be striving for and getting

to. But the problem is that's not happiness. That's a pleasurable experience. That can form part of a happy and meaningful life for sure. But that in and of itself is not happiness. So core happiness, which is this, I think the central new idea in this book, and I work really hard on how can you simplify happiness so it's a really workable model that people think that they can practice. And I want people to think about core happiness as this three-legged stool, right? Each of these legs is separate, but each of these legs is also essential. And if you don't have them, your feelings of happiness will start to collapse. So one of the legs is alignment.

So the alignment leg is all about when your inner values and your external actions start to align. They start to match up. So the person who you really want to be inside and the person who you are actually being out there in the world are one and the same. So that's one of the legs. The second leg is contentment. Contentment is when you feel at peace with your life, your decisions. It's generally about that feeling of calmness, contentedness. I think that is an important leg of the core happiness tool. What are those things you can do in your life that give you that sense of peace and calm? And then the third leg is control. Now, I thought long and hard about this word control because, again, that can be misinterpreted. And control is not about controlling the world, right? The world is inherently uncontrollable. We've seen that over the last two years. We're seeing that

at the moment with what's going on around the world, right? You know, we can't control the world. But what are those small things that you can do that give you a sense of control? Because we know people who have a sense of control over their lives, they have greater academic success, they have higher motivation. We know that they have reduced levels of stress, anxiety, depression. We know that they're happier, they live longer. So really, I designed this core happiness stool, yes, to be practical and workable for people, but I really tested it to see does this hold true for everyone in every aspect of their life? And I really think it does. I think it's a very practical thing that people can

take with them around in their back pockets and figure out why certain things feed their core happiness in life and why certain things actually take away from it. Let me just contrast that with junk happiness. Junk happiness is what I think a lot of the time we think happiness is. You know, getting drunk with our friends or, you know, spending two or three hours scrolling Instagram or gambling or online shopping or, you know, these days it's a huge problem, online pornography. That's the truth. It's, you know, an uncomfortable truth for many people to talk about, but actually that is on the rise massively and it's causing huge amounts of problems. And there's nothing inherently wrong with junk happiness. Like I'm not saying there's anything

wrong with, you know, occasionally spending two hours scrolling Instagram. Okay, that's fine. The problem with junk happiness is if we engage in it for too long, too often, and the problem is if we think that's what real core happiness is. It's not. I'm not saying you're going to be perfect and actually you're going to be like a monk and never ever have any cravings or desires. No. But actually, the more you work on your core happiness you're going to find that you engage in junk happiness habits a lot less not because you're trying to but because you no longer have this void inside you that you're trying to fill with those habits there was actually one quote that i pulled out of the book which i found really thought-provoking and and i just wanted to include

it because i think it's a really interesting reflection on what you were just saying. You said, we're told to follow our dreams. We devote our lives to chasing them and make sacrifice after sacrifice in order to make them all come true. But what we're never told is our dreams won't make us happy. And I think that's such an interesting point about this very modern idea where you're constantly striving for the next thing. You know, I'll be happy when I have achieved this, when I have been able to buy this. And those kind of more picture-perfect moments. And I wanted to understand a little bit more about that

and why that kind of constant striving for the next dream, again, isn't going to feed into that core happiness. Yeah, this is something that, yes, there's science and research on, but there's also a huge personal story here with me. Now, in the book, I call this the want brain. This is a system of desire that's been there for hundreds of thousands of years. And it basically thinks that actually, we need to get ahead by competing with others, making sure we've got enough food and resources and water for our needs and our family. The problem is, is that one brain these days often rules the roost. And I think society conditions us to think like this. And it's really, really toxic. And as a parent myself,

you know, I know you're a parent, Ella. My kids are a little bit older than yours. My son's 11 now, my daughter's nine. And you can see it start to happen, particularly with my son now starting secondary school. I'm really trying to almost undo some of the societal programming that is happening day in, day out at school. Because it's like, I know that won't make you happy, because you know what? I've been on that journey. You know, people will look at us, Ella. They'll look at you and consider, actually, you know what? Ella is someone who's incredibly successful. If I had Ella's life, everything would be great. I'd have my core happiness. People may also look at me and go, oh, well, look at him. He's a doctor. He's got four international bestsellers. He's got a podcast that's listened to by millions of people every

month. You know, they would consider that success. But for much of my life, and even in the early part of my career, Ella, there was a really shallow feeling inside, right? I've realised in the last two years of reflection has really helped me realise actually, yes, those things are nice things to have, but they're genuinely not what make me happy. Like I'm never happier than when, like on a Sunday, if I go for a walk with my wife and my kids, my wife and I both leave our phones at home, I don't think I could be any happier than in that moment. It's not when I'm on social media doing this or that, or when I see the new book comes out and it's, you know, hitting the top of the charts. You know, I've done that for the last four years. I know what that feels like. And I tell you,

the first time it happens, you feel incredible. Second time it happens, yeah, okay, that was pretty cool. Third time it happens, not quite as good. Fourth time, you're just relieved that it happened. And I know that may seem unrelatable to people, right? I really don't mean it to. What I'm trying to demonstrate is that, you know, the way I was brought up, and the context here is that my parents were immigrants from India to the UK. So dad came over in the 1960s in search of a better life. And they faced a lot of discrimination when they came over. So there's very much something in their immigrant mentality, certainly speaking from, you know, an Indian family in my background, they really prioritise academic success. It is a big

thing. And I remember, Ella, I used to come back from school, if I came and said, hey, guys, you know, I did really well, I got 19 out of 20 in the test. They'd be like, okay, great, but why didn't you get 20? If I came back with 99%, it was like, well, yeah, why didn't you get 100%? And you know what? At the time, I didn't think anything off it. That was my life. And what I've realised in the last few years of reflection, which is, you know, I've been very open and honest in this book, which I hope is helpful for people. I've realised that for most of my life, I have never felt good enough. I've only felt good enough when I've achieved, when I was number one, when I came top of the class.

And that's a very lonely place to be, Ella, because yeah, on the outside, you can achieve and do things, but underneath, you know, think about that core happiness tool. You're not aligned. You don't feel content. You don't feel in control of your life. So then you engage in junk happiness habits. And I did, you know, in my 20s, I used to gamble quite a lot at uni. I don't, you'd ever call me a gambling addict necessarily, whatever that term means. But you know, reflecting, I probably didn't have the best relationship with it. It was always, oh, a bit of fun after a night out, let's hit the casino or whatever. But the funny thing is, is as I've healed what I call this hole in my heart, I've not gambled in years. It's not because I've tried to stop. That was a junk happiness habit.

That was filling a void that I had inside me. But I filled that void. I mean, maybe it's not completely full. It's certainly a lot fuller than it used to be. I've realised that actually those things were a compensation for me not being authentic and actually living my life. So I spoke to this incredible psychologist, Pippa Grange, on my podcast about this concept. And she used to work with the England football team. So she's seen, you know, some of the top Premier League footballers, some of the most well-paid footballers in the world. And she has this beautiful term term are you winning shallow or are you winning deep and winning shallow is this kind of yeah you win on the outside it looks great but there's an emptiness inside and she's spoken to so many top level footballers who say my whole life I've wanted

to win the FA Cup and she said literally they they picked up the trophy and they're walking down the steps and they're feeling empty and shallow inside. Because they thought that winning, they thought in response to your question, that actually getting that success, getting that external validation was what was going to make them happy. But they get there and they realise, no, that was a myth. Nothing wrong with getting it, but it's not what's really, really feeding us. So this is, and I think this kind of personal narrative plays into this book in a way that it didn't play into my last four. Like I'm still very proud of my last four, Ella, but I mean, I certainly think it's the best and most important book I've written. And I really feel I've had the

courage to open myself up and be vulnerable. And what's really interesting, Ella, I don't know how you feel before your books come out. I'd be really interested to understand it. But the last four years, I've had a book out at the end of December. And normally what would happen in the middle of December, I'd feel just a little bit anxious, a little bit, oh man, it's going to be out there soon. I wonder what people are going to think. You know, it's a big thing. You spend so much time writing and editing and working on these books. But, you know, as we record this, we're what, three weeks away from release. And I don't feel any anxiety. It's like, that is a reflection of who I am, what I want to put out in the world at the moment. And I'm really detaching myself. It's been a lot of work to get to this point from the outcome.

Like if people don't like it, okay, that's okay. As long as I like it and I'm happy with what I'm putting out, you know, this has been hard work for me because I'm not programmed like that. I'm programmed to judge myself when I get external validation. I used to feel really good. But when you get criticism, you just feel empty inside. Whereas now I'm a lot more stable where the criticism doesn't really drag me down. And I don't really get much of it to be fair, but if it does come, it doesn't bring me down. But also the kind of praise doesn't artificially elevate my ego either. I just feel a lot more flat. So again, quite a long answer, Ella, but you can tell this is very personal for me in terms of what I've been through, but also what I'm writing about. Absolutely. But I think that personal vulnerability is so important to a conversation like this, because this concept of redefining happiness and the role

that that plays within our mental health and therefore our physical health, it's so hard, I think, to have those conversations without those personal elements and I know I can certainly relate to a huge amount of what you if not all of what you were just saying and I'm sure everyone listening can too where I think it's so easy you know no matter what it is that you do in your life whether you know focus on your career or raising children or you're at uni whatever it is it's so easy for that external validation to really define who we are and I think it takes huge amount of internal work which is one of the most difficult things you can do I think to start to redefine that and find that sense of core happiness whereas you said it's not that you might not enjoy the elements that are related to external

events or validation it's just that they don't have to define you anymore, which is a very liberating feeling. But I wondered for people listening and they're thinking, you know, that's absolutely right. I really judge myself depending on feedback I get, whether that's socially or professionally. How do we start to kind of, I guess, on an individual level, but then also on a more macro kind of cultural societal level how do we start to redefine that sense of success and happiness and change that that need for the validation and change it from being external to internal? I think the answer to that question has kind of multiple layers like how do we change it across society that's a lot trickier because we are living in a very materialist, status-driven world. And when you talk to kids and teenagers, and a lot of them, not all of them, of course,

but a lot of them in terms of what people say is, you know, I want more followers, I want this, I want that. And it's like, oh man, thankfully I didn't have to grow up with that. I don't know what sort of winning chalet would have been like for me if I had that comparison as well growing up. So I'm glad I didn't. But my belief, my firm belief, Ella, is the way we change the world is to change ourselves. I believe that with every part of who I am. And it's very empowering that because we've all got reach. We all know people, right? Your reach, Ella, because you have so many people on Instagram following you and social media, yeah, maybe a larger reach than most people. So the way you interact, the way you conduct yourself impacts all those people who are following you for your content. But let's say someone has zero

followers on their social media profile. They have work colleagues, they have the supermarket checkout assistant they interact with when they're doing their grocery shopping. They have the barista in the cafe who they see, right? We literally, with our interactions, we can create a ripple effect and that can spread. And, you know, so that's a firm belief I have. So what does someone do if they heard or they're hearing this content and they're thinking, you know what, that's me. I kind of resonate with what Ella and Rangan just said, like that, I definitely feel that. Okay, that's step one. We often undervalue the importance of awareness and we go, yeah, okay, great. Now I know, but what can I do about it? It's like, hold on a minute.

No good long-term change ever happens without awareness. And what does that look like for me as a doctor? I've seen patients who haven't developed awareness. They just blindly followed a plan for a few weeks to meet a certain goal. Okay, you may meet that goal, but if you haven't developed any awareness over why you're making certain decisions, why you have certain behaviours, you aren't connecting the changes that you're feeling physically with how you're feeling, what almost inevitably happens is that you flip back to where you were before and potentially even worse. So awareness is the first step in any significant change. So even that I think is helpful. Then what can you do? Okay, well, there's so many exercises in the book because how you talk to yourself,

how you view yourself is so important for our health and our happiness. So get groceries delivered across the GTA from real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit Superstore.ca to get started. You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad heard only in Canada. Reach great Canadian listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libsyn

ads. Email bob at libsyn.com to learn more. That's B-O-B at L-I-B-s-y-n.com. One really simple exercise that I love doing, and I've started doing with a lot of my guests on my podcast. It's so interesting to see what people say. And I don't know if you're up for it, Ella, but I could run it by you and see what happens if you're game for it or not. Absolutely. Okay, well, let's do it on you and see what happens. So it's basically about bringing awareness and intention to our life. If I was to ask you now, and please don't overthink it, what three things could you do this week that would truly make you happy? Okay, meditate. Daily meditation for me is like medicine. It's unbelievable. Time away from phone emails with my kids preferably outside properly feeling disconnected from work and completely connected to them and then just some quiet time time of a bit of reflection

of calm in the evenings and again trying to make sure I take that time away from that constant bombardment of work of technology yeah so, so I love that. So for people doing the exercise, they can either do it in their head or they can write that down just on a little piece of paper or on the notes up on their phone, just write three things that you could do. Okay, now the second part of this exercise is fast forward to the end of your life. Imagine you're on your deathbed and reflecting back on your life what are three things you will want to have done or achieved be an amazing mum and have really really I was just going to say happy but I think fulfilled children who feel balanced and stable and I've been able to help them do that

that's that's number one that's by a million miles to have had some kind of meaningful impact and it doesn't need to be on everyone but even if it's on one person two people to have felt that you know I feel I'm very privileged and if I'm able to have any kind of positive impact on someone else that feels like it's made life incredibly worthwhile and to have been a great wife to have really been able to provide a kind of supportive stable calm environment at home oh I love it first of all thanks for sharing them and I always love hearing what people say you strike me as someone who's very aligned actually at least you you know how to be aligned and what I mean by that is the goal of this is that you do the two exercises and then after the

second one on your deathbed you go back to the first one and go, okay, if I do these three things every week, will I end up with that happy ending that I've just defined? And I would hazard a guess that if you meditate every day, if you have time away from your phone regularly so you can be present with the people around you, and you want some quiet time for reflection, which I guess could be meditation potentially on how you view that, I think you're going to get your happy ending, which is to be a great mum. It seems to me that relationships are really important to you. So what I love about this simple exercise is if you are not aligned,

if for example, on your deathbed, you're going can say, well, I hope I've had quality time with my friends and my family. I hope I've had time to engage in my passions and things like that. And then you look at your weekly list that you think you can do. And if none of those things are on it, then you're like, OK, cool. Actually, now I can make sure maybe I need to specify that I'm going to have four undistracted meals this week without my phone with my family. Okay. It's a really simple, tangible way of going. If you do that every single week or most weeks, you're going to tick off one of those big pieces at the end of your life. So I hope that was clear to people, but it's a very simple exercise, but it is so, so effective. And, you know, I'd encourage everyone to actually do that and just see what happens. As you said, it's simple, but it's really powerful. It's just

like doing gratitudes in your head every evening. It's simple. I do it every night. It takes me probably 20 seconds, but it's so powerful. those little moments of reflection, as you said, for kind of checking in on your alignment. But one question I had on that is I think often we know what we need to do to feel better, both mentally and physically, but so often we don't do it. There's a kind of block there. And yes, sometimes it's a kind of practical block, like it's just a particularly busy week or maybe children are ill or whatever it is and I think that's different but that disconnect it almost feels between what we want to do and then actually giving that to ourselves or to our families and I wondered motivation almost doesn't feel like quite the right word there and I wondered if it kind of really feeds into self-esteem and

self-worth because I think sometimes we know what we need to do but we don't necessarily feel we deserve it or have earned it as such. Yeah Ella you bring up a brilliant point and I agree I don't think it's about motivation I think we overly emphasize motivation. This is what chapter three is all about which is called treat yourself with respect. This is about compassion, compassion to ourselves. It's not very British to say something like this, but you know, do you really like yourself? Do you love yourself? Can you treat yourself as well as you can your child or a friend? Because actually, the research on self-compassion is literally overwhelming. I had the pleasure of chatting to Professor Kristen Neff on my podcast, who's probably done the most research on self-compassion over the past 20 years. And she has shown time and time again that people who are compassionate to themselves, they have more success, they are more motivated, they look after themselves better, their immune

system functions better, they age more slowly. There's all kinds of benefits. But often, and this goes back to what we were speaking about at the start and when I was talking about my own story, Ella, this idea that it's just not possible to achieve long-term health or happiness if you don't love yourself. Because without that, everything has a ceiling. Everything else ends at some point. You're overly relying on motivation. And out of push, I would say chapter three is probably the most important chapter in the book because it really relates to this. How do you talk to yourself, right? There's all kinds of exercise in there to help people with that. Or, you know, I love this mirror exercise. And again,

people may feel uncomfortable with this, but it's this idea, can you look at yourself in the mirror? And can you look at yourself in the mirror like you might do your partner or your child? Can you look at yourself in the mirror with love? Now, if you're someone who's hearing that and you immediately pull away, okay, no problem. I understand that. I was the same a few years ago. This is something you can work on and practice. And I promise you, there is no better thing to work on than loving yourself. And there's all kinds of exercises I've sort of outlined in the book, simple things that people can work on. And I've seen this play out with Patience Ella, right? I had one patient, I think I wrote about her in the book. She was mid-40s lady, and she had all kinds of seemingly unrelated symptoms, gut problems, she had some

sort of pains. And, you know, she'd been basically sent from doctor to doctor, all kinds of medications, nothing was really working. And I remember when I saw her, and I was trying to figure out what's going on here, why has nothing worked? And her self-talk really, really caught my ear. I thought she views herself pretty negatively. And actually in her life, she'd got into this pattern where she would always get together with married men who were considerably older than her, who would treat her badly. This was a really common pattern. And, you know, once I developed a relationship and built up some trust with her, I kind of went there with her. And she was really open to it. And working on some of these self-compassion exercises, she realised that

this is programming that she'd received when she was a kid, as a child, from the way that she was brought up and what she saw around her. And once she learnt to be able to look at herself in the mirror, to be able to write, there's an exercise in the book called write a love letter to yourself. And this idea of can you write down each day, five things that you love about yourself, she couldn't do any of this at the start. She literally couldn't think of one thing. But having done that for like maybe six to nine months, she could fluently write those things every day. And little by little, she started to feel better. She started to be more compassionate to herself. And Ella, two years later, she told me

that she'd been in a stable relationship with a guy of her own age who was single when she met him for the last few months. And she said all her symptoms had gone, completely gone. And this is the missing piece again in healthcare. A lot of these symptoms that are physical symptoms are coming from the way that we view ourselves. And, you know, Gabor Mate has written an incredible book on this. You know, there's all kinds of stuff. We know that actually, if you don't love yourself, if you hold on to anger, hostility, if you allow other people to really frustrate you all the time, you create psychological and emotional stress in your body. that is linked now with the development of autoimmune disease, with cancer, with heart disease, with stroke. So on the outside, we can be having our beautiful, organic, colourful plates of vegetables. We can be doing our yoga and our Pilates and sleeping.

Hey, I'm all for this, right? I'm not saying don't do that. But if you're someone who talks to yourself negatively all the time, if you're someone who allows the emails from your boss or the actions of other people to affect how you feel internally, actually, you're going to really struggle. If you're waiting for everyone to behave in a certain way in order for you to feel good, you know, I figured this out a few years ago. I'm going to be waiting a certain way in order for you to feel good. I figured this out a few years ago, I'm going to be waiting a long time. I cannot change how other people interact with me, but what I can do is change my response or own my response to it. And it's been life-changing. So yes, the book's about happiness, it's about mental wellbeing, but it's also about

this is the missing link in healthcare I'm convinced of it and I really want to get that message out there. It's such an important message and I couldn't agree with you more I mean when I first became interested in health and well-being it was very much through food and what I put on my plate and it became so clear so quickly that as you said it's not to dismiss that obviously that's incredibly important but in no shape or form does this sit in isolation and I think the way that we often look at health and well-being is so often very kind of one if not two-dimensional and we're looking at just what we eat or just how we move our bodies and we totally disregard the fact as you said that external stresses and the

way we view ourselves and the effect of having these kind of lingering negative emotions actually does have a physiological impact on the body. And I wondered if before we perhaps look at a couple of those daily tools that people can implement to try and regulate how they feel a bit better, as you said, so they're not so impacted by those emails from their boss or how other people feel. Could you help us understand a little bit more, what is it that happens within the body in a kind of simple manner on a physiological level that means that that anger, that hostility, that stress, those negative emotions can actually have the stress response in our body is arguably the most important response because it's there to get activated if it feels that we are under threat or vulnerable to attack. So I think very simply, many people may have heard this idea of stress before, but in case people haven't, let me just try and give a sort of top line overview of it. A million years ago, you were hanging with your tribe, you were in a hunter-gatherer tribe, you were getting on

with your day-to-day life and a predator was approaching. Someone spotted a lion approaching the camp, let's say. What happens is in an instant, your stress response gets activated. All kinds of things happen in the body. Hormones like adrenaline, noradrenaline, and a bit later on cortisol. These are stress hormones that people may have heard about. These things get activated and their job is to help keep us safe. So our blood pressure goes up so that we can get more blood and more glucose to our brain so we can think better and run faster. Our muscles have more sugar in them. Our blood has more sugar in it.

The amygdala, the emotional part of our brain, goes on to high alert. So we are really, really almost anxious. We're hypervigilant for all the threats around us. What else happens? Our libido gets switched off because actually in that moment you don't need to be able to relax and procreate with a partner, which is why stress is the number one cause of low libido and low libido is on the rise massively. Your gut function also gets switched off. So if your body feels under threat, actually it switches off your gut function. So if you're eating in a stressed out way, you may have your organic, colourful plate in front of you and,

hey, I'm not perfect. This is something I need to work on. I will often eat a perfect meal in a stressed out way. And actually, I won't be digesting and absorbing all the nutrients in it as I might do. But the important point is, is that gets activated, the stress response, and its job is to help you run faster or think of a way to get out of trouble. And then hopefully, you've got out of that trouble, and everything calms down again and gets back to baseline, right? That's fundamentally the stress response. Now, if you look at what we're talking about through that lens, let's talk about negative self-talk for a minute. We know from Kristen Neff's research, when you say in your head, oh my God, I'm such a loser. I can't believe I did that. You're such an idiot, Rangan. Even that feels weird to me now because that used to be my life, Ella. I would always talk

to myself like that, but I have worked on this. I pretty much no longer do unless you know very very rarely and I've got the awareness now to catch it and go ah you know she's shown that when we talk to ourselves in this way you're activating your stress response adrenaline's going up noradrenaline's going up cortisol's going up all those changes start to happen and so you know you know, we can think, and I know many people like this, where I say, you know, I didn't say anything, it's just in my head. You know, we think saying, oh, what a loser, can't believe he did that. We don't think there's anything wrong with that. But actually, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but there is an impact on us when we talk to ourselves like that. So that's one way I hope people can understand. And therefore,

if that's happening day in, day out, you're activating your stress response on a daily basis. So of course, all these changes in the body that are taking place, which are designed to be there for like 30, 40 minutes at most, they're going on day in, day out. And that's why this leads to all of these chronic conditions and problems that we're talking about and we're facing. And I think the other thing that might be useful for people, Ella, is this idea that how do you feel when you get tense or you feel stressed out or you're feeling angry? If you have spent a bit of time scanning your body, and this might go into one of the practical tools maybe we could share with people, you will start to identify where that sits in your body. So that

emotional tension in your brain is actually creating physical tension in your body. So you're creating that physical stress. So Ella, for me, one of my most treasured daily practices for my happiness and health, a bit like some of your answers actually when we played that little exercise game on defining happiness for yourself, is a daily practice of solitude. For me, I would almost say it's the number one thing that I do each day that helps me with my health and happiness. And typically, I'll do it first thing in the morning. I've got a little morning routine that is really, really important to me. And why that's so important is that it allows me to get in touch with how I'm feeling. So as a junior doctor, I remember maybe first year

out of med school or second year, I remember being on the wards with sick patients and one of our seniors came around and said, well, he was teaching us about something called early warning systems. He was teaching us and saying, hey, look, if we take regular observations, so heart rate, temperature, respiratory rates, oxygen saturations, that we can put people into different categories and zones and we can predict who's going to end up needing a high dependency bed or an intensive care bed in four hours. I thought, how cool is that? We can predict, so therefore we can take preemptive action when we see parameters going in the wrong direction. And when I was writing this book, Ella, I thought,

that's exactly what my practice of solitude is for me. It's my early warning system. So for years when I would feel tense, Ella, I would have this real tension in the upper part of my back on the right hand side, but I wasn't even aware of it. Just going on, I was so busy. I never paid attention to my body. I didn't know it was there. Now, when I'm doing my morning routine, on some days, I can feel it. And I'm like, oh, so now I'm aware of what that emotional stress has done to me physically. And because I'm aware, I can do something about it. So A, I can do a bit more breathing or meditation just to help calm me down. But often it's a case of,

why is that going on at the moment? Oh, you know what workload has been creeping up a little bit at the moment. Maybe tonight I need to prioritise a bath and an early night because I can feel that actually this keeps going for a few more days. You know, I'm going to get reactive. Maybe I'll have an argument. Maybe I'll start to get even more stressed. So for me, it's kind of like this, it's how I take the daily pulse on my own life. I just think it's one of those things that so many of us, I think, are so kind of far removed, as you said, from that daily pulse. And also the fact that I think, you know, it's still, I think, taking people a bit of time as the research emerges to realise that actually, as you said, this stress response, chronic stress

actually has a physiological impact. I know it's something you've been talking about for years, but it's great, I think, always just to kind of refresh and understand exactly how that works in terms of the body's response and understanding how those outcomes come about. And I wondered as we start to kind of wrap this up, I know we've talked about your daily check-in and I absolutely relate to that. I think it's so, so important. And we both actually do something similar every morning. But in terms of those daily tools, are there things that you really recommend that people explore and trying to incorporate into their lives to support their happiness their

mental health and therefore their physical health yeah there's there's so many i mean this is why i wrote the book it's full of practical tools but at the top of my head what are some simple things that i can share with people to help them feel oh i can do this and let's take a really simple one right there's a chapter called Talking to Strangers. And I love this one because extroverts would probably find this easy, introverts probably not so much. But we know so clearly from the research that when we talk to strangers, so people we don't know, but we have a little positive interaction with them, it signals to your brain that actually your social world is safe. So you feel in control, right? And remember, at the start of this conversation, one of the three legs of this

core happiness tool was feeling in control. So when the Amazon delivery driver pops around, instead of just taking the package, if you look them in the eye and say, hey, thanks so much, appreciate it. How's your day going? Simple as that. Or when you pick up your coffee at the cafe, you just take 20 seconds or 10 seconds to have a few positive words with that barista. We know that that makes you feel happier in the moment and those positive feelings last for the entirety of the day, right? So it's a very simple thing. And in fact, my challenge to everyone listening would be wherever you are right now, even you're extroverted take the pulse on how often you do that some people you know like me I naturally do that but even I could probably do it a little

bit more than I currently do and so my challenge is can you do it a little bit more because when you do that you may not think you're doing it you're working on your levels of happiness you're reducing stress you're increasing calm simply You're working on your levels of happiness. You're reducing stress. You're increasing calm simply by doing that. So that's one very, very simple tip. I think what we said about solitude, I've called this taking a daily holiday. And this is chapter nine in the book. And I was really trying to think about what is it holiday gives us when we go on holiday? Of course, it gives us all kinds of things. Often it's sun, relaxation, whatever. But one of the big things that week-long holiday, when we get on

a plane and go to a beach somewhere, it gives us is perspective. It allows us to reflect on our lives. I know for me, as soon as I'm on the plane even, I seem to have this big picture view on my life. All the things that I might be anxious or worried about just seem so trivial. So it really gives you that perspective. And one of my mates told me about an office where he used to work. And he said, you know what the bosses used to have on their desk, or one of the bosses, this countdown timer. And it would say, oh, 78 days to go, 77 days. And he would often say to my mates, oh, in 72 days, I'm going to be on that beach in Florida. So his whole life was literally gearing up for that holiday, just counting down for, oh, that's when I'm going to

be happy. And I'm making the case that actually you can take a daily holiday from your life every single day. So that 10 or 15 minutes when you step out, I would encourage people to not use their phone during this time, unless it's like a meditation app or something like that. Because the problem is, you know, phones are great, right? There's so many great things from phones. But if we're constantly absorbing information from the world around us, even if it's helpful, inspirational content, we're still consuming the thoughts of other people. And what I really want to help people do is say, tap into how you're feeling, not how you're being told to feel by other people. And so 10 or 15 minutes a day,

whether it's sitting in silence with a cup of coffee, whether it's going for a walk around the block, whether it's doing a jigsaw puzzle, whether it's playing the piano or guitar, if that's your thing, or drawing something, whatever it is, 10 or 15 minutes out of your day each day, consider that as your holiday. It's a daily holiday. And what you're going to do when you do this regularly is you're going to strengthen all three legs of that core happiness stool immediately. Because when you take time out to reflect, you're going to strengthen all three legs of that core happiness stool immediately. Because when you take time out to reflect, you're going to feel more content. You're going to feel more in control of life. But it's also going to help you get more aligned. The reason many of us

are living lives that are not really aligned with who we are inside, it's because we've never taken time out to sit and reflect. And so, you know, I say 10 or 15 minutes, if you've got half an hour, even better. But if you're someone who's really busy and you think even 10 or 15 minutes is too much, okay, do five minutes, right? Start where you're at. The point I'm trying to get across to people is happiness is a skill. It's something that you can work on. You can get better at it. And, you know, if you do one of these exercises, you're going to feel a little bit happier than you currently are. If you do a lot of them, you're going to feel a lot happier

than you currently are. But it's not a race, right? It's not as if you're going to listen to this podcast, apply them and suddenly go, oh, my all my life sorted now or read my book and go, oh, you know, I've got it cracked. No, this is a regular practice. You know, I'm trying to share tools. I think a simple, easy, every tool I've shared in the book, Ella, is free. This stuff is accessible, I think, to pretty much everyone. I've been, I work really hard to make sure that's the case. And so, you know, these are some simple tips. Can I share with you one of the tips that I found the most useful? Definitely. It's all written about in chapter five, seek out friction. And this has been life-changing for me. This is about using any case of social friction. So, you know, someone, let's say, cutting me up

on the roads, or someone leaving a negative comment on social media or an email, which is, you think, you know, that tone's a bit harsh, you know, I didn't like that, I wish they'd done something differently. Any bit of social friction, instead of looking at what they've done, use it as a learning opportunity about yourself. So what you do then is that you become in control. Like every day is a school day. Every day is a learning day. And so suddenly it's a case of, why has that email bothered me? Can you write a different story about it in your head? Actually, you know what? It was a bit curt, that email, but you know what? My boss is probably super

stressed out at the moment, really struggling. Maybe his daughter was up with earache last night. You know, the truth actually doesn't matter, Ella, for your happiness. You can develop the skill of writing a happiness story in every single situation. It can be challenging. You know, and the person who really helped me get this, I don't know if you ever heard this conversation I had with Edith Eger on my podcast, Ella. She was 93 years old last year when I spoke to her. I think about this conversation on most days. She was in Auschwitz in the 1930s and 1940s. She was a 16-year-old teenager.

She was due to go on a date with her boyfriend that evening. They got a knock on the door and her parents, her and her sister got put on a date with her boyfriend that evening. And they got a knock on the door. And her parents, her and her sister got put on a train to Auschwitz. Within a couple of hours of getting there, her parents were murdered. She had to then dance for one of the senior prison guards. And she said to me, Dr. Chachy, when I was dancing in front of these guards, I remember what my mum said to me. My mum said to me, Edie, nobody can ever take away from you what you put inside your mind. So she said to me,

when I was dancing, I wasn't dancing in front of them. In my mind, I was in Budapest Opera House. There was a full house in front of me. There was an orchestra. That's what I was dancing. I thought, wow, that's pretty incredible that you can reframe that. Then she said to me, when I was in Auschwitz, I wasn't in prison. The prison guards were in prison. They were the ones who weren't being free and living their lives. In my mind, I was free. And then she finished off by saying to me, I've been in Auschwitz, But I can tell you the greatest prison you will ever live in is the prison you create inside your mind. And I think about that all the time, Ellen. I think, well, if Edith Eger in the absolute hell of Auschwitz can write happiness stories or reframe situations to give her a sense of inner peace and calm, I actually think, well,

probably most of us, if we think about the kind of stuff that we worry about in day-to-day life, we can probably also take some inspiration from that and reframe how you do that. Now, there's many practical ways you can do that. I've kind of detailed them all in the book for people, but I've got to say, that is something I use every day. Even yesterday, something happened and I thought, no, no, not about the other person. Why is this bothering you? How can you reframe this? And when you do that, you don't bring that stress into your body.

You just feel a sense of calmness and lightness. And yeah, so anyway, I hope that was clear. I hope that was helpful, Ella. But that's really, really helped me. It was extraordinarily powerful. I've got about 40 more questions I want to ask. But I did want to ask one last question, actually, because I think, and actually, obviously,

the story you just shared is very relevant to this. And obviously, we've been through an extraordinary few years. You know, we've had, like, catastrophic weather events across the world. We've had a global pandemic. You know, there have been several kind of devastating wars, obviously, in the last couple of decades. And we've now got something absolutely inexplainable unfolding in Ukraine. That's, you know, absolutely terrifying. I think people across the world with this kind of rupture of peace and, you know, the memes going around about World War Three is, you know, it's a real reflection on the world we live on, where we're kind of making jokes on social media about something that's kind of potentially so catastrophic. And in so many ways, it feels strange, yet incredibly pertinent to be discussing happiness at this time. And I wanted your thoughts on how we manage the extraordinary uncertainties, the kind of fear that percolates and how you still find those moments of peace and joy in your day,

but then equally kind of without feeling extraordinarily selfish for being able to be lucky enough to have those moments. Yeah, it's a great question, Ella. And of course, because of the events over the past couple of weeks, it's even more relevant, you know, is talking about happiness now actually quite trivial? Is it ridiculous? And I would take the opposite view, which is it's even more important now, I think, than ever before. And remember, we're talking about core happiness, not maybe the common perception of this kind of fleeting smile, joyful happiness. This is something a lot deeper. And I'm drawn to this control leg of the core happiness stool, you know, one of those three legs. Much of the world feels uncontrollable at the moment. And the same principle applies,

although this has gone to quite an extreme now with what's going on in the world. The same foundational principle applies to even before this was going on, which is the world is inherently uncontrollable. First of all, are you able to do anything to help? If you are, great. Maybe you want to donate something, charity, sleeping bags, make you feel as though you're doing something. But if you then allow yourself to sit there in front of the news all day, every day, feeling negative about your life, because yes, there are people at the moment in certain parts of the world who are really struggling. There are people, frankly, for many years who've been struggling in all kinds of different parts of the world. It's just what are we shining a light on and

what are we therefore seeing? What can you do on a daily basis to give yourself a sense of control? Well, maybe it's a little ritual. Maybe it's a little bit of journaling in the morning whilst you have your morning cuppa. Maybe it's this reframing exercise. If you're feeling tense and actually everything's bothering you and you're allowing that to not be as present a parent as you could be, or you're having rows with your partner, can you reframe it in some of the ways that we demonstrate so far? Can you be kind to yourself in this moment? And actually the truth is many of us actually can't influence what's going on in another part of the world with forces that are seemingly well out of our control. If you don't

practice the things that I'm talking about, you're going to really struggle. Control your newsfeed. I mean, if you want to stay informed, and of course, that can be important. I would say watch the news once per day, maximum, and ideally don't do it in the three hours before bed. If you find yourself going on social media and you see these memes flying around and afterwards you feel worse, well, the whole point of our conversation, Ella, one of the big themes is about intention and awareness. Pay attention to how you feel afterwards. Maybe you've got to delete that app for a few weeks. Maybe you don't want the news updates on your phone. I remember when one of my best mates, a few years ago, his mum was dying from cancer. And he said to me, he said, listen, mate,

I just can't deal with Instagram at the moment because every time I go on there, it just makes me feel bad about my life. So I've decided to delete the app. And he deleted it. And, you know, a few months later, his mum died. And a few months afterwards, he re-put it back on his phone and then was enjoying it again. So I'm sharing this to help people understand that this is what's going on at the moment, but hopefully this will be over at some point. There'll be something else. So you have to develop the skill and you need to know the techniques of being able to look after your mental wellbeing, irrespective of what's going on in the world. It doesn't mean you don't care. It doesn't mean if you were in that situation, you wouldn't give a damn about happiness. Hey, that's the truth. We can think about this if we have a relative degree of safety in our lives and our basic needs are met, right? So we've got a job and it's a bit money. We know

that we can go to bed and there's some shelter over our head at night. Yeah, sure. If you don't have that, yeah, maybe talking about happiness is a little bit trivial. That's in terms of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. It's much more important to get those needs met, food, safety, and shelter. But if you're someone who does have a safe place to put your head down every night, yeah, there is stuff going in the world that we don't support, that we don't like, but you need these skills more than ever and you know I really think that the tools in this book are going to help people and arguably they're more important now than they ever have been before I totally agree with that because I think it's so easy to think you know when when this happens as

you said but whether that's kind of macro world events which is as we've seen clearly out of our control but also personal events you never know what's going to happen and so living with that when this finishes we'll we'll all be okay again is is a kind of dangerous mentality and as you said tools to navigate it are extraordinarily important well rongan honestly can't thank you enough for this conversation it's been so reassuring is almost the best word it's very much created that core sense of happiness in in me certainly and I hope it has in in everyone listening we always like to finish by just asking our guests what's the one thing that you do every day to help yourself feel that little bit better and and I imagine it is that practice of solitude but but I'd love to hear yeah it is without question having a daily practice of

solitude even if it's only 10 minutes it helps me with my own health my own happiness my own self-awareness but it also helps me show up in a better way in every aspect of my life Ella I'm a better husband when I've had a bit of solitude in the morning I'm a better husband when I've had a bit of solitude in the morning. I'm a better parent when I've had a bit of solitude in the morning. I'm a better doctor when I've had, you know, solitude in the morning. I'm a better everything. So for me, I know because I've practiced with it and without it. But some days, Ella, I've thought, you know, I'm a bit busy today, you know, you know, screw it. Let's just crack on with the emails. I will do that from time to time, but almost always I feel it later.

I'm a bit snappier. I'm a bit less productive. And I don't call that a failure. Again, coming down to self-talk, the old wrongan would have gone, man, I can't believe you did that again. You know how good this is for you. Why did you not do it? No, not these days. These days, it's more, I approach it with curiosity. Oh, that's interesting. Isn't that interesting that you know this, but you haven't done it? I wonder why that is. And I consider it a education when it happens. It teaches me, ah, oh, you forgot, didn't you? But this is really important. It happened last week, right? And I've written this, I hope, helpful book. I did it last week and it was like, oh, come on, Ron, you know, you've written about this, you know, you're a better person. So for me,

no question, Ella, that's my one daily practice that I'm, you know, trying my best not to miss. And also, Ella, I want to say I've so enjoyed chatting to you. I love what you do, what you put out there in the world. I think you're helping so many people. And I really, really appreciate you having me back on your show. It was honestly such a pleasure. Well, thank you all so much for listening. We will see you back here very, very soon.

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