00:00:00
i internalize this idea that unless i get a hundred percent unless i win i'm not good enough i'm not loved doctor
00:00:07
and broadcaster doctor wrong and chatterjee your first book was a huge success my guest today is the perfect
00:00:14
guest it's a really big honor to have you on my podcast my son janam getting sick at six months
00:00:19
old changed the course of my career you see we need to evolve the way that we practice medicine sleep deprivation is
00:00:26
associated with pretty much every single chronic disease we have compared to about 60 years ago we may have lost up
00:00:32
to 25 of our sleep the way society is set up now is making us lonely we've moved away for work we've
00:00:39
moved away from our families we don't have the tribes around us and it's very
00:00:43
very damaging for our health it took me ages to figure this out the dots i think
00:00:47
you can always make a change right you can use these moments of diversity in your life to
00:00:53
teach you something it's the best journey you'll ever take but it's a
00:00:56
journey it's not a one hit the first step in any change is so without further ado
00:01:06
i'm stephen butler and this is the diary of a ceo i hope nobody's listening but
00:01:11
if you are then please keep this to yourself [Music] dr rongan chatterjee i am i have to say i have to stop this
00:01:25
conversation by saying it's a really big honor to have you on my podcast because
00:01:29
you are someone when i started taking my podcast seriously who i looked up to and
00:01:33
admired for so many reasons not because you are you've really kind of paved the
00:01:36
way for these long-form conversations in the uk but because you have the same very
00:01:41
similar subject matter and apparent interest in the conversations you have with your guests to the point that it
00:01:48
inspired me in a really big way to start this platform and so when um when i found out that you were coming in today
00:01:54
it felt like you know it felt like a bit of a felt like christmas day for me because the the conversations you have
00:01:59
are the things that i would spend my spare time sort of um watering my brain with so
00:02:05
thank you first and foremost for coming in today it's a huge huge privilege i
00:02:09
receive and i appreciate you saying that and and likewise i feel really honoured
00:02:13
and excited to come on your show because i think long-form conversation matters and i don't there's that many people in
00:02:21
the uk doing it like you are like i am and um you know i think you're doing great
00:02:26
things with your shows so i'm i'm i'm really excited just to have a long
00:02:30
conversation with you i don't know where it's going to go but um yeah thanks for having me so take
00:02:34
me back to the foundations who who were you so i grew up in the northwest of england
00:02:41
and you know mum and dad were immigrants from india you know dad came over in 1962 for a better life to the uk mum
00:02:50
came over in 1972 i grew up got an older brother and you know like many immigrant families
00:02:58
education was king right it was about get good grades at school go to a good university get a
00:03:07
good job right that was the kind of drive from home my experience was very much man the culture at school was really
00:03:16
different from the culture at home and i didn't really think much of it at the time but you know now in my early
00:03:22
40s looking back and reflecting as i've done for this new book is that was incredibly problematic
00:03:31
in many ways because you end up pretending to be somebody you're not in order to fit in
00:03:42
and i can see now that's been a pattern for most of my life i've not been myself
00:03:49
i've tried to be someone else i've i've tried to do things to get validation and love
00:03:54
from other people and i've got to say it's only been in the last years where i've managed to kind of
00:04:00
let that go another piece there which i think is really relevant to your question is
00:04:06
because education was such a big thing you know because mum and dad dad in particular so much discrimination he
00:04:14
faced right when he came here in his job he had to change career change speciality
00:04:19
as a doctor because he just couldn't advance and so ultimately he ended up moving to a speciality he didn't like he
00:04:25
didn't enjoy to give his family security so what do they want to do they want
00:04:31
their children to not have to go through that so i grew up with this kind of idea that
00:04:39
i'm only loved when i'm top of the class right i'd come home if i got 99 in an exam my mum would
00:04:47
say why didn't you get 100. what if i came out uh with 19 out of 20 in a test okay what
00:04:53
happened why didn't you get 20. now what's really interesting about that
00:04:58
is i'm not criticizing my parents right i love my parents i think they've
00:05:01
brought me up really well but it but it speaks to a situation there's different perceptions right so
00:05:09
i spoke to mum recently i said hey mom why why did you ask me those questions you
00:05:15
know why did you push me so hard and she said to me because i knew you were capable i wanted you to be the best
00:05:21
that you could be so mom did it with me from a place of love right she wanted the best for me
00:05:26
but walk around to the other side of that story i internalize this idea that unless i get 100
00:05:32
unless i win i'm not good enough i'm not loved and i can now see that drove me my
00:05:38
entire life this need for external validation what are other people saying about you people say nice
00:05:45
things you feel good people say nasty things you are literally broken inside so you know a lot there that i've come to
00:05:54
terms with over the past few years but for me understanding that i can go back and rewrite those stories put a
00:06:00
different perspective on all those events has given me this real sense of freedom
00:06:06
calm contentness and ultimately you know it's resulted in me feeling really really happy
00:06:14
one of the things you you've said is that you believe the purpose of life is
00:06:20
really finding out who you are because once you find out who you are then you can go on the journey of finding out
00:06:25
what is what it is you want so my question for you is what did you then pursue as a
00:06:30
consequence of believing that external validation was true validation that was true truly your
00:06:36
purpose what was your how were you misguided or led astray yeah so i went to university at edinburgh at edinburgh
00:06:44
medical school you know left home having the time of my life partying you know whatever you know people when they they
00:06:51
get that sort of sense of freedom for the first time a lot of my uni life was spent playing
00:06:55
in bands right so music is a big part of who i am what i do um you know so i'd be practicing layers
00:07:02
we'll be playing loads and loads of gigs and then it all changed i must have been
00:07:05
20 21. i think mum phoned me at like 10 30 at night and said hey look dad's in
00:07:10
intensive care the doctors don't think he's gonna make it through the nights can you come
00:07:15
back home and i remember seeing dads in the incentive care unit and you know he ended up surviving the nights
00:07:22
his kidneys failed he went on kidney dialysis for the next 15 years but basically
00:07:27
dad getting ill changed the trajectory of my adult life so yes i was in edinburgh i finished off i worked
00:07:35
there for a couple of years but my mind was always back in the northwest and i moved back to the northwest which
00:07:41
is one of the reasons i live there now to help my mum and my brother look after dad and it was incredibly stressful
00:07:47
particularly in the last years before dad i had really really stressful and i would i would escape periodically so
00:07:53
coming back to your question about how does that impacted me i wanted to do well like i got my specialist exams i
00:08:00
uh want i got good jobs in prestigious hospitals right i got those things i thought that's what i'm doing i'm doing
00:08:06
the right thing and then when dad died in 2013 march 2013 it was like there was a big hole in my
00:08:15
life and so i would just go walking i was just trying to make sense of everything and the truth is the amount i
00:08:23
learnt from dad's death was just profound i'm not sure i would have learned these things i was asking
00:08:30
myself whose life are you really leading i don't regret any of it now that dad's not here i'm glad i spent
00:08:37
so much time with him but i think it was a real cost to me my inner peace my inner well-being
00:08:44
and dad's death here's the irony stephen the things that my dad would have been
00:08:49
proudest of right indian immigrant to the uk his son with his own bbc one show in 2015 2016 right
00:08:57
his son with four sunday times bestsellers dad would have literally been phoning all the relatives you know
00:09:05
being the embarrassing dad telling everyone dad never got to see any of it but i know if that was still alive
00:09:11
i'd be doing none of it why if i was still in the mindset that i was when my dad was sick
00:09:19
i wouldn't have any time to engage in this stuff like life if there's anyone listening to this
00:09:24
who's a carer for someone in their life they'll know what i'm talking about you
00:09:29
you don't have time you don't have physical time you don't have mental
00:09:31
space it just it encompasses the entirety of your life you're just trying to keep your head
00:09:37
above water you're just trying to get through day to day you are fire fighting so i wouldn't have
00:09:45
had the the physical time but also i think a lot of what i'm able to give to people these days
00:09:52
through books through podcasts through you know one-on-one with patients is the learnings you know that the
00:09:59
learnings i've acquired from going through dad's death from going through that pain from coming out
00:10:05
the other side from going what can i learn from this so i'm not sure if what i would have had to offer people
00:10:16
back then would have been as valuable as what i feel i have to offer them now why did you choose medicine was that
00:10:25
again part of this broader thing of thinking that was success and that would be that would satisfy parents or you know
00:10:32
society because again there's a bit of a stereotype isn't there there with a
00:10:35
indian immigrant coming over and you know when i sit here with um people from that that background typically the
00:10:41
narrative is and to be fair in my case as well as an african immigrant that successes doctor lawyer
00:10:48
etc 100 you know it is a stereotype but but it's largely true for many families you know
00:10:58
as an indian immigrants child in the uk the three careers that generally are available to you are dots a lawyer
00:11:07
engineer that's what is valued of course just to be clear that's not every single family but just by and
00:11:15
large i think that's true but i tell you this stephen i know loads of them who are so unhappy as doctors
00:11:22
so unhappy they compensate for the tedium of their work right by getting smashed on a friday and
00:11:28
saturday nights right and they wonder why they can't give up boozing or why they enjoy it so
00:11:34
much well because that's a symptom it's not the drinking isn't the problem
00:11:39
the drinking is a symptom you don't enjoy your job you've gone into the wrong career
00:11:46
because you thought it was what you should do sometimes you're stuck now in your 30s you've got a mortgage
00:11:52
you know you've got a lease on your car you feel trapped but you can free yourself from that trap
00:12:00
you you absolutely can but you have to be honest you have to get to know who you currently are now
00:12:06
before you've got any hope of becoming the person that you i didn't want to be
00:12:12
it's so unbelievably true in every way i mean so much of that i can relate to for
00:12:15
so many reasons and you know you were talking there about your your almost your parents missed
00:12:21
place love what you've clearly managed to figure out later in your life is that
00:12:25
actually came from a place of love yeah that's why i call it misplaced love because they were trying to protect you
00:12:31
because they loved you but it turns out that that misplaced love what it's doing is it's
00:12:39
stopping you from being your truest self and the long term consequences of that when you end up living someone else's
00:12:46
life is what you've spoken to there the symptoms of addiction and drinking and impulsive
00:12:52
behavior that we see in people so my overall conclusion there was this urgent need as soon as possible in your life to
00:12:59
get in touch with exactly who you are and defend it at all costs at all if you can do it at 16 if you're
00:13:06
45 and listening to this now is the the second best time yeah i mean i've got so much to say on that um
00:13:14
you're never too late to start on this journey but how does someone start on that
00:13:20
journey right i think it comes down to values right values is what i think what sews it all up together
00:13:32
right so you know for this new book i've created this new model of happiness i call core
00:13:38
happiness so core happiness has three components alignment contentment and control we can
00:13:44
talk about those if you want but one of those legs is alignment alignment is when
00:13:50
your inner values and your external actions are the same when the person who you
00:13:57
want to be inside and the person you are actually being in the world are one and
00:14:02
the same that's one component it's not everything but it's one component
00:14:05
so if someone has heard what we're talking about say okay i want to start i'm not living the life that i want to
00:14:10
lead but i don't know where to start there's this exercise in the book called
00:14:14
the identity menu and the goal is really that you go through and i picked number three
00:14:21
because i think it's quite a um a realistic number for people out of the list of all these possible identities
00:14:27
and values which three do you think feel kind of the most true to you and i've
00:14:35
been doing this for a little while and the three that have been pretty static with me for the past few months now i'd
00:14:41
say and they're right at the top of my instagram profile because i think this
00:14:44
is what i want to give to the world and say let's lead with our values integrity curiosity and compassion
00:14:53
so this is who i am right i'm not a doctor i'm not a father now i i really i think this is such an
00:15:03
important point that i've been thinking a lot about the last few years i have a role as a doctor i have a role
00:15:11
as a father but it's not who i am because when we cling too tightly to our identities
00:15:19
we put ourselves in a very fragile position let's say you know i go over i'm the doctor you
00:15:24
know i'm dr chatterjee you know when i i sort of absorb that and i think that's
00:15:28
who i am then what happens if i get fired right what happens if i get sick and i
00:15:34
can't work as a doctor what happens when i retire this this is real this happens
00:15:37
to people they lose their sense of who they are what about my role as a father right
00:15:44
to be really clear me bringing up my kids well is one of the most important things to me more
00:15:49
important than my work 100 but being a good father is not who i am if i cling too tightly to that what
00:15:57
happens when my kids are teenagers and they get annoyed and they call me a crap dad
00:16:04
i've seen this happen i've had patients come in say oh they call me a crap mom but you
00:16:08
know that's all i do i i do everything for them i've given everything up for
00:16:11
them it's like wait a minute you are much more than your roles you know let's talk about cars right
00:16:19
you said when you were 20 you wrote down what you wanted right there's nothing wrong with having a nice
00:16:24
car the problem comes for your happiness at least when you identify with that car where that car says
00:16:33
something about you and the problem is you drive around i don't mean you one
00:16:38
drives around in their flash bmw let's say and they think you know that says
00:16:45
something about me who i am what i'm saying if you lose your job what happens
00:16:48
if you prang it what happens if you have a divorce and you can't afford it anymore
00:16:51
you go from what i call core happiness to junk happiness junk happiness is what many of us think happiness is
00:16:59
right we think it's that momentary hit of pleasure you know buying something online
00:17:05
instagram uh chocolate bar uh hit of booze right these things can be pleasurable things they may have their
00:17:13
role from time to time but don't mistake that for being real core happiness core happiness is i think what we are
00:17:20
chasing but i think we misdefine it we think it's something it's not happiness
00:17:25
it's not a destination that we one day get to right it's a direction that you
00:17:31
can choose to take in life it's a choice right i heard your conversation with mo in the
00:17:36
hotel room last night which was fantastic so good and i agree with what you and me was
00:17:43
saying happiness is a choice when you understand what happiness really is what is it
00:17:51
it's not a thing that you can get to it's not something that you can pursue directly it's something that
00:18:01
ensues when you do the right things and the right things for me are when you focus on the three
00:18:13
i call call happiness this three-legged stool alignment contentment control you can apply it to anything in life i i
00:18:20
think that's what happiness is and i think we are pursuing it like people say
00:18:23
we shouldn't be we shouldn't be going after happiness we should be going after meaning have you
00:18:28
heard that yeah yeah all the time right i have a different perspective meaning and purpose
00:18:36
is really important no question but i don't think that's happiness it's
00:18:41
meaning right it's a necessary ingredient for happiness but it's not happiness in
00:18:49
and of itself and i don't mean to be controversial but let's say um a soldier fighting in world war ii
00:18:56
against the nazis right one might make the case that that has meaning it doesn't mean they're happy hundred
00:19:05
percent right so meeting hummus is subtly different have you heard of the japanese concept of ikigai yes yeah yeah
00:19:10
right i love ikigai this idea that um you know we should be looking we not should be but we could be looking for
00:19:16
something in our life that we enjoy that we're good at that's what the world needs
00:19:22
and what pays us money right the kind of holy grail does it were and i remember writing about this
00:19:28
in my second book on stress i remember the book came out and i was in london i was giving
00:19:33
a talk and at the end of the talk we were doing q and a i remember the back right of the hall
00:19:40
this young lady had a hand up and she said dr shastaji i'm an 18 year old japanese student
00:19:47
living in london i've grown up with the concept of ikigai my entire life and frankly i found it
00:19:53
demoralizing demotivating too high a bar for me to get to and that stuck with me mate because i
00:20:00
thought since then okay that's so interesting because i love this concept of icky guy
00:20:05
she grows up with it and finds it off-putting i think the problem with these grand ideas of meaning purpose
00:20:13
ikigai as much as i like them they're not for everyone someone someone might be hearing that in a call center
00:20:21
right now they don't like their job they're doing it and they're like what
00:20:25
icky guy you're kidding me mate i just want to get through and and pay the bills right so i think i bring it all
00:20:32
back is this core happiness store that i've created is it applicable in all situations i think it is because if you
00:20:38
look at it through the lens of what we're talking about this comes under alignment
00:20:43
so that chat working in the call center they do the exercise and they figure out
00:20:46
kindness is something that's really important to them then if on the way to work
00:20:52
they stop in the coffee shop and they're kind to the barista they get on the bus to work and they're
00:20:58
kind to the bus driver they go to the job they don't particularly like but they are kind to their colleagues and
00:21:03
their boss they're living an aligned life they're living with meaning it doesn't mean that
00:21:10
the job that they're in currently is the job that they love and they're going to
00:21:12
be in forever but they're living in harmony with who they are and that's
00:21:17
going to mean that meaning and purpose come naturally as a byproduct so i want people to really focus on
00:21:24
alignment it's one pillar of happiness and i think your meaning and purpose will come can
00:21:29
you talk to me about control as well i thought long and hard about this word control
00:21:36
and i am denied was it the right word to use and i spoke to some of my patients i
00:21:42
suspect some of my friends i don't really think it is when we understand it's about what are the
00:21:48
things that i can do in my life that gives me a sense of control we know from the scientific
00:21:54
research when you have a sense of control right you have better relationships you
00:21:59
have longer relationships you're healthier you have lower stress levels you live longer
00:22:04
so it's that sense of control and and that could mean many things to to different people you know for me
00:22:10
i'm really big on morning routines right i know for me if i get up early if i
00:22:16
have time to myself to have a little routine i've i've almost got this like resilient
00:22:21
bubble around me doesn't matter what's going on in the world doesn't matter how
00:22:25
bad work may or or may not get that day i've got an element of control because
00:22:31
i've i've sort of nurtured that routine for myself so that's one that's one way
00:22:35
that people can think about control and another way people might want to think about control is
00:22:39
there's a and there's a chapter in the book called talk to strangers which is basically this idea that
00:22:45
actually relationships are very important of course but there's kind of two different
00:22:50
kinds of relationships that are the deep nurturing intimate relationships but there's also the
00:22:56
there's also those kind of almost trivial interactions that we have day to day
00:23:02
right so when you say hi to the barista or you know i said hi to your work colleagues when i got here
00:23:09
those little things they are not trivial there's a network in your brain called the sociometer
00:23:16
right it's constantly detecting your external world for threats and when it receives positive information like a
00:23:24
smile like a you know a bit of a nod a handshake you know it it sort of relaxes you your
00:23:32
stress levels go down you feel a sense of connection with the world around you coming back to control
00:23:39
you feel that the external world is safe i've got degree of control there is
00:23:44
order in the world let's focus on these simple things you can do each day if you
00:23:50
say hi to the amazon delivery driver and smile at them say thank you to the barista and say a few nice words to them
00:23:57
say hi to the bus driver and smile at them thank the postmen you are working on your happiness
00:24:04
you know it seems trivial but it's not the research is so so clear right because it gives you a sense of control
00:24:10
second pillar of the three and we've got to touch on the third pillar before i start getting into all
00:24:15
of these topics because so it's so interesting that these are the things that you know we're talking about today
00:24:19
because i think i spent all weekend um reading about studies on the importance of you call it the sociometer
00:24:25
in the brain but just that that thing that connects you with your tribe but please do get into the
00:24:31
third point which i think you said was contentment contentment yeah yeah contentment is
00:24:37
about feeling calm and that sense of peace when you're at peace with your life and you're at peace with your
00:24:43
decisions so what things in your life give you that sense of contentment and i really feel it's these three
00:24:53
things when you put them all together the side effect of doing them is you're happy yeah right but but also
00:25:03
happiness is not often what we think it is that that big billboard image of the the happy family on the beach with a
00:25:11
smile on their face in the ocean behind them right that to me is not happiness that's a pleasurable
00:25:19
experience yeah it can form part of a happy life but that's not happiness you can be sad
00:25:26
and happy the way i look at happiness core happiness i was thinking about this last week i
00:25:32
was chatting to someone who who was going through grief you know someone very close to them had
00:25:39
died and you know we were having a really long deep conversation but they were present with their grief
00:25:47
and they were able to share with me exactly how they were feeling no masks on at all in terms of these kind of
00:25:55
metaphorical masks that we put on they were just being themselves that's called happiness
00:26:03
because they're aligned right their inner thoughts are i feel sad upset frustrated for my loss
00:26:13
and their external actions are completely aligned with that so i kind of feel really what happiness is about
00:26:22
is living an intentional life it's about taking the time to understand who you are
00:26:28
defining for yourself what happiness is or what success looks like not using society's definition you post a few days
00:26:36
ago don't use society's definition of fun right that's a great post you know just
00:26:41
because society says to have fun you need to go to a bar have loud music on and get drunk well if you like to sit at
00:26:49
home in the bath reading a good book that that's great if you don't that's
00:26:54
fine as well but it's got to be you it's your values so i can't tell someone what they need to
00:27:01
necessarily do in all aspects of their life to be happy but be intentional about your life
00:27:08
my girlfriend came upstairs yesterday when i was having a shower and she said to me that she tried the heel protein
00:27:12
shake which lives on my fridge over there and she said it's amazing low calories you get your 20 odd grams of
00:27:18
protein you get your 26 vitamins and minerals and it's nutritionally complete
00:27:21
in the protein space there's lots of things but it's hard to find something
00:27:24
that is nice especially when consumed just with water and that is nutritionally complete and that has
00:27:31
about 100 calories in total while also giving you your 20 grams of protein if you haven't tried the cured protein
00:27:38
product do give it a try the salted caramel one if you put some ice cubes in it and you put it in a blender and you
00:27:45
try it is as good as pretty much any milkshake on the market just mixed with water it's been a game changer for me
00:27:52
because i'm trying to drop my calorie intake and i'm trying to be a little bit
00:27:55
more healthy with my diet so this is where heel fits in my life thank you for making a product that i actually like
00:28:00
the salted caramel is my favorite i've got the banana one here which is the one
00:28:03
my girlfriend likes but for me salted caramel is the one you know when people give um advice in
00:28:11
their books and you know when i do it online with my content there's something
00:28:14
which i realize has to be done first so as much as you could have told me to get into alignment
00:28:22
the the counter force that was saying [ __ ] that was this deep sense of insecurity and that piece of work i had
00:28:29
to do as you describe it to heal first before i could start looking with a clear view
00:28:35
at um the way i was living my life because if you'd asked steve butler at 18 years old what his values were
00:28:41
you know he would have said lamborghini next question he would have said money right i know there's not even values but
00:28:47
that's what he would have said right so i'm interested to know how you think
00:28:50
someone can go on the journey of healing um and understanding themselves in self-awareness which i think is the
00:28:55
foundation and all the pillars you mentioned of happiness it's a great question um
00:29:02
i don't think it's going to be you listen to this conversation you watch it on youtube you
00:29:09
get the book whatever i don't think it's that you do that and then you're like oh
00:29:12
i've got it i've figured it out now i know my values okay great no this is a
00:29:16
journey it's the best journey you'll ever take but it's a journey it's not a one hit
00:29:22
the first step in any change is awareness all behaviors serve and needs where every behavior we have is there
00:29:34
for a reason you can't just i can't tell the patient you should drink less alcohol
00:29:38
without helping them understand why do they need to be drinking that alcohol in the first place
00:29:47
right it took me ages to to figure this out the dots i think why why why am i struggling why do they stop for two
00:29:51
weeks then they they get back on the horse it's like oh we've not dealt with the underlying
00:29:57
needs it's like new year's resolutions right no one has a problem going spinning four
00:30:02
times a week for the first two weeks in january but third week fourth week when life gets busy and life gets
00:30:11
stressed or they can give up booze for a couple of weeks and they just can't keep it going it's
00:30:15
like you know i need it to unwind from my work day that's because your alcohol
00:30:19
consumption is a symptom of the way you're living your life if you want to change that you can try and
00:30:27
white knuckle it and reduce it sure you might be successful for a short period of time but you'll always go back
00:30:32
unless you understand the behavior same thing kind of works for food cravings a lot of the time so someone's
00:30:39
listening to this and they go okay i want to know what to do but even if they're starting to
00:30:44
challenge themselves already and go you know i'm pretty interested what these two guys are saying you know i
00:30:50
don't kind of know what my values are but i've got a feeling that i'm not living
00:30:55
life in accordance with them like i think i'm chasing the wrong stuff but i don't quite know what to do about that
00:31:00
even that awareness is progress right so i think it's really important we we can't always just find out get to
00:31:07
the solution go and live happy lives it doesn't work like that so step one is awareness now if you have
00:31:13
that awareness and you want to go further a simple thing you might want to do is
00:31:18
what i call the identity menu in the book you might literally want to try and write down three values or even
00:31:27
one value start with one right start with one right just write down one value and then
00:31:33
in a week's time ask yourself how often in that week did you live in accordance
00:31:38
with that how often in that week did you live in a way that was not in harmony with
00:31:42
that okay it's not about beating yourself up it's not about holding yourself to this
00:31:46
unattainable ideal it's just ask yourself the question just gently start compassionately probing
00:31:53
what's going on right so i think that's a useful exercise and build up to three values if
00:31:58
you can and you know these things need reassessing the other exercise i like which i think is really practical
00:32:05
it's got two parts it's called define your happiness habits and write your happy ending right and if
00:32:11
if you want we could try actually just do it if you're right for us so i would ask you stephen
00:32:17
think of three things that really bring you a sense of happiness deep calm and contentment and
00:32:24
make you really feel good um so i think one of them which i've actually read about in your book is
00:32:29
about serving others and helping others it feels to me like a a happiness rush or a sense of
00:32:38
fulfillment or contentment that i can't seem to get anywhere else the other one
00:32:42
is like pursuing my artistic interests so things like when i can see my djing equipment over in the corner there when
00:32:48
i do my djing or when i give give time to myself to write or create okay i call that like expression that's like yeah um
00:32:56
and then i think the third one is is what i think you call in your book like movement
00:33:02
so moving so um exercise when i go to the gym and i and i'm not sure why that is because this
00:33:08
might fit into a number of categories because in in part it's like meditative
00:33:11
when i'm on the running machine or on the peloton it's really meditative on
00:33:14
the other part it's has there's obviously physiological impacts and biological impacts of the exercise and
00:33:20
then on the third part it might just be because i'm giving time to myself so i'd
00:33:23
say those are the three that came to mind straight away yeah okay so you've you've picked what i call three
00:33:28
happiness habits yeah right so each week and please correct me if i've misinterpreted any of this
00:33:34
um each week if you could do something that serves others if you could engage in your artistic um
00:33:42
passions and you could do a form of movement you enjoy yeah there are three things that
00:33:47
would give you you know real sense of happiness so i believe okay no no i i think they probably are
00:33:52
and i'll share my name it's just second seconds let's get to the second part of
00:33:55
the exercise okay it's called write your happy ending so imagine now you're on your deathbed yeah
00:34:01
okay so at the end of this is it right look back on your life what are three things you will want to
00:34:09
have done so that's really interesting because it's funny because the answers
00:34:12
are different um one of them is definitely about connecting with others my friends so
00:34:16
like my friends my family my niece that's like that's in fact so central to
00:34:22
my happiness um the third is helping others that gives me a real sense of um that i spent
00:34:28
my time in a worthwhile way and sorry the second and the third would be the third is a as a personal one it's
00:34:35
the feeling that i've i've done my potential justice yeah lived up to your potential
00:34:42
lived up to my potential done myself justice yeah yeah i love them i mean first of all thanks
00:34:48
for sharing that um so what's really interesting when you do the second part now
00:34:53
you can go back and redo the first one and what's really beautiful i think there's
00:34:58
i think there's a real deceptive simplicity with this exercise it gives you the sort
00:35:04
of granular day-to-day look at your life and happiness and it gives you the 30 000 foot kind of big
00:35:11
picture view and you can see if they're aligned so if you do the three happiness
00:35:16
habits each week doing something for someone else sorry serving others engaging creatively
00:35:22
and um uh you know moving will that get you to your happy ending no so i was missing one you're missing one
00:35:33
yeah the relationship piece yeah exactly yeah and so this is not about catching anyone out this is something i think we
00:35:38
can all benefit from myself including on a regular basis it doesn't mean you can automatically
00:35:44
change the entire trajectory of your life but it does mean this is about intention right it's like if that's what
00:35:49
the goal is at the end well like for me i know three happiness habits for me are what
00:35:58
number one spending undistracted time with my wife and my children each week that's really important
00:36:06
number two doing something that helps improve the health and well-being of others
00:36:10
really important number three having time to pursue things that i'm passionate
00:36:17
about that's kind of my three i'm doing the the the final piece the 30 000 foot yeah so
00:36:24
i know each week then for happiness habits if i have let's say five meals around the dinner table with my wife and
00:36:33
kids that's where there's no phones and we're totally undistracted and in the moment
00:36:38
right i know that i'm i'm doing that i know if i record an episode of my
00:36:42
podcast each week i know that i'm doing something that's going to improve the
00:36:47
lives of other people and if i have time to i don't know play guitar play snooker um
00:36:56
you know whatever you know i've got all kinds of creative passions each week then i know that if i just
00:37:01
consistently do that just a little bit each week i'm getting to the happy ending that i want
00:37:06
and for that person who may be listening to this and struggling that may be something else that they can start doing
00:37:12
you know and what's really interesting stephen is we think we think we're all
00:37:15
quite different there was a study from last year which showed us that actually despite all our differences we feel as
00:37:22
if we're being our true authentic selves when we're being kind compassionate
00:37:28
doing things for others enthusiastic presence and in the moment right all of us and what i love about these exercises
00:37:36
they really bring awareness and attention to your life you could say yeah i really value health i really
00:37:43
value my health and well-being and then they can assess their life and go i do nothing each week to support that i say
00:37:50
that's who i am but i'm not you can say as i did for many years i valued my friends you know what i got so
00:37:55
busy with work i wasn't making time to see them and again it's not about beating
00:37:58
yourself up this is really really important point this is about honesty and awareness right you're never going
00:38:05
to become the person who you want to be until you know who is the person you are
00:38:10
right now it's not about guilt it's not about shame it's about just transparency
00:38:14
going okay all right i'm not aligned at the moment okay fine no problem i'm
00:38:19
going to take one step this week i'm going to make an effort once a week i'm going to
00:38:24
phone one of my best mates just for 10 minutes just to say hi even that is it's helping you become more aligned
00:38:33
it's helping you get to that happy ending so you know maybe there's some useful stuff
00:38:37
in there for people to kind of take and actually start applying it's so funny
00:38:41
because when you said that exercise you know i could spend a lot of time as i think i have in the past trying to
00:38:46
figure out who i was and the techniques are complicated and they're largely influenced by um
00:38:52
who society thinks i should be and what my values are the minute i did that exercise it was so clear
00:38:57
it was so unbelievably easy to do and so clear and then as you said when we zoomed out to my deathbed and said like
00:39:03
what are the things in your last days that you're going to value to to see how obvious it was that i'd
00:39:08
left out something so so so fundamentally important which is like my friends my family my
00:39:14
relationships in my sort of you know the things that make me happy was like alarming to me it
00:39:19
was like how are you not living in alignment mentally how how did you not know that that was so
00:39:25
fundamental i think you just beautifully illustrate seeing that we can see it yeah
00:39:30
brilliantly in other people oh hundred percent man i could see and you i could see it in my patients but you know what
00:39:35
it's pretty hard sometimes to put the mirror up and see it in yourself do you know what i mean
00:39:41
i think the other you know i think you you've asked a brilliant question what
00:39:44
can that person do i think the other the other thing and probably arguably the biggest this is the biggest
00:39:52
thing i think that's had the most impact on my happiness and wider health over
00:39:55
the past years is this understanding of perspective that there are multiple perspectives
00:40:05
on the same situation and i think it's a really important point for people to get
00:40:09
so let's say someone's stuck in their life i think look i don't know what to do i'm
00:40:15
trapped here right uh i i don't know i get up i go to work you know i try and
00:40:19
look after my family you know i don't know this stuff about values and all that kind of stuff okay fine
00:40:25
if you just forget all that stuff for a moment and go okay let me just see if i can start broadening my perspective
00:40:31
because once you start broadening your perspective and start seeing things from somebody else's perspective it changes
00:40:37
everything so one of the ways i do this is to understand that this phrase yeah i'll go as far as this
00:40:46
this phrase has had the most impact on my health and happiness above anything else
00:40:52
if i was the other person i would be doing exactly the same as them again a very simple phrase but when you
00:40:59
really really get it you're basically saying if i was that person with their childhood
00:41:05
their parents with their life experiences i would be acting in exactly the same way as them
00:41:14
and if you think you wouldn't i would i would very gently invite you to consider that
00:41:20
this may be your ego talking if they could act differently they would and what that does is it brings such a
00:41:28
deep sense of compassion to every single day of your life you can start to have a
00:41:32
perspective for them for example it could be maybe their daughter was sick last night and up and they didn't get
00:41:36
much sleep maybe they think they're going to lose their job when they're
00:41:39
they're late for work right whatever it is it doesn't matter the truth doesn't
00:41:42
matter right for your happiness the truth i would say doesn't matter again i don't mean to be controversial
00:41:48
but i think some people will take that i think that's quite controversial you're
00:41:52
a football fan right there was a study done football match one incident right um two sets of fans they were
00:42:00
interviewed about the incidents both of them had a completely different perspective
00:42:06
on the same incident right you we all know that there's a foul or you know one team that's
00:42:12
definitely foul that's a foul and a yellow card the other side that was nothing you didn't touch him he died we
00:42:17
know that anyone who's got a partner right or had a partner you have a row you have a disagreement
00:42:23
well depending on which side at the table you're sitting on you have a completely different perspective of the
00:42:27
same situation right so i say in any situation choose a happiness story right i'll give you another example
00:42:36
one of the most profound conversations i have ever had on my podcast was with this lady called edith eager
00:42:42
when i spoke to her last year she was 93 years old at the age of 16 she was getting ready that evening she
00:42:52
had a date with her boyfriends knock on the door her parents her and her sister get put
00:42:57
on a train taken to auschwitz within a couple of hours of getting there edith's parents get murdered
00:43:06
somehow she gets through the next few years she survives what she has taught me is that
00:43:17
you can always create a different story on any single event she said when she was in auschwitz she
00:43:26
was totally free the prisoners they were free they were the ones who won't be able to
00:43:32
act and behave the way that they wanted to they were trapped in her mind she was
00:43:36
free after her parents had died she had to dance for the guards right and she said the last thing my mom said
00:43:45
to me was edith nobody can ever take away from you what you put inside your mind
00:43:52
so she's dancing there she knows her parents are dead but in her mind she said
00:43:58
wrong and i was dancing in budapest opera house there was a full orchestra there's full
00:44:04
crowds i was dancing there right the other thing she said to me is i've been in auschwitz but i can tell
00:44:11
you the greatest prison you will ever live in is the prison you create inside your minds
00:44:19
so for people who are listening who struggle to forgive who struggle to see the other side who
00:44:25
see someone put a tweet up and then spend an hour getting agitated and frustrated
00:44:31
i humbly suggest to you if edith eager can write a different story in the hell of auschwitz
00:44:43
i kind of feel we probably can as well it's so true that the greatest harm we cause to ourselves
00:44:50
is is our own negative or illogical or self-harming stories as you were saying that i was thinking about even the
00:44:58
stories i've i've told myself in the last 24 hours or the last week which
00:45:03
have like tormented me mentally in the sense of they've just like bothered me
00:45:08
unnecessarily and how much of a choice it was for me to focus on those stories if you know what i mean like
00:45:16
as you say like someone tweeting something or leaving a comment and then that you then give
00:45:20
48 hours of your happiness to just this when you could as you've expressed so
00:45:25
eloquently choose compassion for the person and you know you could you could choose to
00:45:30
try and find the best intentions in any behavior right yeah the way i i put it in the book there's a
00:45:36
little section called make everyone a hero i think it's such a great sentiment in
00:45:41
life whenever something happens you don't like make them a hero make them a hero i challenge people try
00:45:47
that for seven days if your life has not been improved in any way fine forget it
00:45:52
say the guy was splashing nonsense i'm not interested i'm getting back to my
00:45:56
cynical nature i'm gonna see the worst in everyone right fine it's up to people make them a hero the
00:46:03
person who cuts you up find a way to make them a hero in your heads right march 2020 what happened
00:46:11
everything's getting locked down toilet roll shortage on the shelves right so what do people do now i
00:46:17
understand that was a very unique situation people are getting triggered people are getting scared i understand
00:46:21
that but let's look at what was happening people were bad mouthing um who are
00:46:28
these people who are taking all these toilet rolls it's so inconsiderate you
00:46:31
know they shouldn't be doing that okay okay fine let's just see could we write a
00:46:36
different story what might have happened well it could be that every shopper that
00:46:39
day took one extra roll and so by the end of the day when the tv cameras came in
00:46:45
no one actually did anything that bad they just took one extra roll and the supermarket stock was all
00:46:50
planned around average shopping habits and behaviors okay um it could be that someone was really really scared
00:46:59
and anxious and let's say they've got ulcerative colitis and they have to go
00:47:04
to the toilet 20 times a day and they're petrified so maybe they did go and buy
00:47:09
ten packs or maybe let's take it to another extreme maybe someone is skint right they've got no money they've got
00:47:17
no prospects in life they thought you know what i can make a fortune here right so i'm gonna get them all i'm
00:47:23
gonna sell them on ebay okay whatever you think of that if you can have compassion for
00:47:30
that person and understand if i was them i'd be doing the same thing it changes everything it changes your
00:47:36
physiology it changes your perspective and why i think that's so powerful particularly now more than ever stephen
00:47:43
like we seemingly we're in a very divided and toxic world right seemingly what we need is more compassion
00:47:54
right but how do you get compassion we can't just say you know i want to be more compassionate
00:47:58
that can work for some people use this right make them a hero ask say to yourself if i were them i'd
00:48:06
be doing the same thing you know it really helps humanity it helps you feel better individually but
00:48:13
it will help connect you with people around you people who've got different views and perspectives it allows you to
00:48:18
sit alongside them so this is probably one of the things that i use the most along with which sort of goes along with
00:48:24
this um and this is sort of the big heading in chapter 5 of the book it's called seek
00:48:29
out friction right look this is when you become a master of your own happiness right
00:48:36
the whole goal of my work at the moment is to i don't want people to be dependent on the actions of
00:48:43
other people for them to be happy right if you constantly getting triggered and and frustrated by the tone of your
00:48:52
colleagues emails or the way that your partner is talking to you right if you're waiting for them to change in
00:49:00
order for you to be happy well you could be waiting a long time if we go back to my core happiness stool
00:49:06
you've lost control you have no control because you're dependent on other people
00:49:12
so i talk about this as social friction right just as in in the gym you know you
00:49:18
can do physical friction you can push up you can press up against your body and you get stronger i'm saying you can
00:49:24
press up against other people and also get stronger so every time you get triggered i actually do this i do this
00:49:30
every single day let's say let's say social media let's say you get a negative comment
00:49:35
let's say i get negative comments in the past five years ago when i you know was first on bbc one about seven
00:49:43
years ago now actually um i would have got triggered got so frustrated i would have felt really bad
00:49:48
what's going on why is this happening you know all i'm trying to do is help
00:49:50
people would have created this narrative now it's like ah why is this triggering me
00:49:57
is there some truth to it that i can learn from or is it because the other person's
00:50:01
having a bad day and they're taking it out on me and you become a master if you practice
00:50:08
this every day right because what happens is that you take control over your inner
00:50:14
thoughts you take control of your own happiness because it's like okay it doesn't matter you're being given
00:50:19
opportunities every day to learn something for me i can i can speak but i know this
00:50:24
to be true for most people it's because it's it's pressed on one of your insecurities
00:50:31
right when you get truly secure in who you are what other people say it doesn't affect you like i've noticed
00:50:38
this in my own life right we started off the conversation talking about external validation
00:50:43
like the problem when you need external validation for your self-worth is that when you get it you feel great
00:50:49
or you think you feel great it's a very fragile uh way of feeling great but when you get criticism you go
00:50:55
to the other extreme where you feel worthless and you turn to whatever your junk happiness habit is instagram
00:51:01
gambling drink porn whatever it is right you turn to that as a way of compensating but when you do the work
00:51:08
when you look for social friction and you allow it to become your teacher you start to process your insecurities
00:51:17
and then if people praise me now on social media say oh wrong in that podcast changed my life or you know your
00:51:23
book has really had an impact on me and my mental well-being i like hearing that
00:51:30
but it doesn't artificially elevate my ego like it might have done a few years
00:51:34
ago but at the same time if i get criticism right if i get criticism it doesn't drag
00:51:40
me down to those depths either i can i'm just a lot more level did that make sense
00:51:47
100 as you were saying that once again my mind sat there and thought how does he know
00:51:54
all of this stuff and how has he gotten to a place where he can be so empathetic
00:51:59
and he can understand others to the point that you can as you say make them a hero and practice that what seems like
00:52:04
a pretty radical form of empathy in situations where others would resort to blame and um you know antagonism and
00:52:11
attacking others and it appears to me that is because you've understood yourself and actually being able to see
00:52:18
the you know what people might describe as the insecurities or the flaws in others or the triggers and others
00:52:24
is only possible once you've understood yourself and it's funny because when i
00:52:27
put certain things on instagram i know that i'm going to get backlash so if i
00:52:31
say personal responsibility is really important you can choose for example in the case of what you've said there you
00:52:37
can choose to make someone else a hero if someone cuts you off it's a choice
00:52:42
um as to whether you're you're happy or you're triggered i know there's a small proportion of people who
00:52:48
will slide into my dms and go you're wrong if they've cut me off that's
00:52:53
forced me to be unhappy or i'm not at fault for being unhappy right and it tends to be the case that those
00:52:58
that are able to make that person a hero or to practice empathy are those that have actually done the work to
00:53:05
understand why they are triggered why they were insecure and why they react in the way
00:53:10
they do so again it feels to me that this really underlying foundational piece of work that is the catalyst for
00:53:17
being able to do all of these amazing things that you've written about and that you understand again is that like
00:53:22
that awareness as you described it yeah i think he's spot on stephen it also comes from
00:53:31
having lived through the mental turmoil of taking a different path of blaming others
00:53:38
and seeing yourself as a victim and often we absorb these sort of patterns from our parents right
00:53:44
i can see clearly now how mum and dad would react to the world and i could see how i absorbed a lot of that and i
00:53:52
thought that's how you show up with the world but we can all choose to approach the
00:53:57
world differently just because you have approached the world a certain way for all the years you've been on this
00:54:04
planet let's say until this conversation right everyone listening or watching has a
00:54:09
choice at the end of this conversation they can decide whether to act on something they've heard
00:54:18
or not can i just press you on that one on that point there about your parents because i
00:54:22
think it's it touched on something that i really relate to in my in one of my parents which is um
00:54:29
and this might be an immigrant thing my mom was pretty badly racially abused for
00:54:33
for you know living in plymouth she's a nigerian woman you know i really didn't
00:54:36
see anyone else in my in my city that looked like her if i'm honest once upon
00:54:39
a you know once in a while i might once a year but she was an anomaly in appearance she was a nigerian woman with
00:54:45
long you know nigerian hair um and i grew up i have to say because she was often racially abused
00:54:55
seeing a kind of bias in her towards thinking that the world was out to get her and
00:55:03
um i don't think that served her if i'm gonna be completely honest if you know
00:55:08
what i mean there that and you see in other people that kind of sense that they are a victim
00:55:14
do i ever you know i would say this is how my mum very much has shown up with the world
00:55:25
and similar stories you know there is all kinds of reasons for that and you absorb that you think that's the
00:55:32
way you know that's what your parents how they react it's often what you
00:55:36
absorb as a child you think that's the way so i can't believe they did that
00:55:40
they they did that differently i would feel differently and it's really understanding that you have
00:55:47
a choice in how you show the world you have a choice in how you feel about a situation
00:55:52
you can choose a different story mum to be fair to my mum's now 81 she's pretty immobile
00:55:58
uh me or my brother give her breakfast on most days um she is changing right she it's so wonderful to see
00:56:08
sometimes it's like well done mum like you're not it's just so wonderful to see
00:56:14
that any one of us can change at any age right we can make subtle choices small things that make a big
00:56:22
difference you know i also grew up very protective you know you'd see things that weren't there you
00:56:28
know man if someone cut me up in my 20s i'm not sure i should even say what went through my mind right
00:56:35
you know i wasn't calm and content you know at all i'd get triggered i think they were
00:56:42
you know whatever you know i may even shout in my car you know uh for the sake of my career should
00:56:49
probably just not go any further but i'm just joking you know i'm saying i
00:56:53
probably said things in my head or scream them out that i'm not particularly proud of now
00:56:59
but i can see that i didn't have the emotional maturity and the emotional awareness
00:57:08
to do anything different what is that what is that that vic is victimhood in your view often like an
00:57:16
ill thought through form of self-defense that because i'm thinking about why say
00:57:21
our per se our mothers who are subject to a lot of abuse or whatever why did they make the choice that the world was
00:57:29
not on their side and how because that seems like maybe in the the short term it might help you so if
00:57:35
something happens to you or you know you know you're unsuccessful in business
00:57:40
um you can say well it was the bank they're racist um how how what is the cycle the
00:57:46
psychology there and the human that's choosing to default to victimhood and you see it in a lot of my i see it a lot
00:57:51
of my friends actually when they fail at something it appears that they use they
00:57:56
use blame as a way to protect their self-esteem or i think you just nailed it that that's what it is it's
00:58:03
protection it's it's to give you that feeling of safety that's what we're
00:58:06
always craving we want to feel safe so it makes you feel safe actually it's not
00:58:10
it's not me it's out there it's not in here it's out there that's the problem if that changed
00:58:16
i think that's part of it so but is that because those people can't they could they can't deal with more
00:58:23
that they're too they're too fragile that they can't deal with more what they perceive to be
00:58:28
evidence of their inadequacy yeah absolutely and it also comes down to any trauma
00:58:38
that they may be carrying from their childhoods this is the other thing i've
00:58:42
learned stephen is that you know without going to details on mum and dads um that i don't have permission
00:58:47
to share you know there were traumatic things that happened early on in mum's
00:58:53
life and so now i can look at that with a deep level of compassion that oh that's why
00:59:02
mum behaves the way she does because actually she got programmed at a young age that i have to be a certain way
00:59:11
right and then you you pass it on and i think you said about your mum and my mum
00:59:17
let me share something from from my life that maybe just fits in there a little bit which is
00:59:23
we create these behavioral patterns usually in childhood right because we want the love and
00:59:30
affection of our parents we want the validation because they're our caregivers right we need that to feel
00:59:36
safe so touching what we said earlier i knew that if i came out with 100 there'd be smiles at home right
00:59:46
everyone's happy wrong is done well right so i internalize that i think that's the
00:59:54
way to be loved in life fast forward i'm at university and there's a passion here in all aspects of
01:00:01
life um like whether i was seven and if i lost at ludo my mum says i would literally toss the
01:00:09
board up and storm out the room like i was furious if i lost at ludo right and it sounds like a funny thing
01:00:16
that your mum embarrasses you with from thailand no actually now that i've unpicked it it's actually very serious
01:00:22
i remember i was at uni maybe second third fourth year at uni can't remember on a sunday often after
01:00:28
the passing of the friday and saturday night we'd end up in diane's pool hall
01:00:31
in edinburgh i go with one of my mates and i'm a pretty decent pool sneaker player right
01:00:38
if i was ever losing i'd go into the toilets and look at myself in the mirror
01:00:44
give myself a talking to you i'll tell these guys have a little slap on the face come back out
01:00:49
more often than not i would go on and then win the match and i thought i just liked winning and i
01:00:55
was competitive that was all the story complete nonsense it wasn't that i liked winning
01:01:01
it was that the pain of losing was too great because it it reminds me on a deep primal level
01:01:10
i'm not loved when i lose when i'm not the best right so it's that feeling of safety
01:01:17
and here's the other thing if i did win i wasn't happy that one i was just happy that i didn't lose
01:01:23
right and then you compensate you don't realize it it might be a bit more sugar
01:01:27
that evening a few extra beers that night a little cheeky trip to the casino on the way back because you've got this
01:01:33
discomfort in your body in your soul right that you need something you need a junk happiness
01:01:41
habit to deal with it we're all going through that my parents your parents right
01:01:49
they've they've also had childhood programming that they're playing at
01:01:54
and i think when we really get that we can be compassionate i have to say that was
01:01:59
just outstandingly beautiful the way you've articulated all of that and it really did bring me back to this sense
01:02:04
of empathy which links to something you said earlier which is if i'd gone through what my mum had gone through
01:02:10
coming from africa to the uk you know god knows what age she did i think maybe 17 having left school and
01:02:19
then having to fight for survival in the way that my mum did and i what you know
01:02:23
my mum is the single hardest working person i've ever met my entire life i would have behaved in the exact same
01:02:28
way yeah and that really it does a remarkable thing for your perspective on them
01:02:35
how you know how you view their struggle and how you view their current behavior
01:02:40
which i think is actually a really good pathway to engaging with them and then being able to have conversations and
01:02:46
that's it is such a beautiful sentence that one of had i been through what they've been through i would have
01:02:52
behaved in the exact same way and that is completely true of my mother i did not
01:02:58
i did not have to struggle in the way she did because of her struggle it's true for all of us actually
01:03:05
i think we can all apply that to every single interaction in our life and in fact my challenge would be try it
01:03:13
suck it and see see what life feels like see what your experience of life physically viscerally emotionally see
01:03:22
what it feels like when you start to show up like that day to day right if you're skeptical okay i hate
01:03:28
your skepticism my challenge to you if you're skeptical is try for three days
01:03:33
just try it because i'm not here to try and convince people i'm not here to tell people what
01:03:40
to do i know this has literally transformed the way i show up with the worlds and
01:03:45
try it with your enemies right yeah sure try it with your parents who hopefully you love
01:03:51
trap with your enemies try it with that person at work you don't like try it with that boss
01:03:58
who really pisses you off and riles you up every time try it maybe you can't do that straight
01:04:05
away maybe we have to work up to that this is a skill right happiness is a skill you can get
01:04:12
better at it but how would you know how to get better at it when did you get taught the skill of happiness
01:04:18
i didn't get taught it right i don't teach it at school i didn't teach at university i didn't
01:04:24
learn it from my parents i didn't learn it from society in fact the lessons i
01:04:26
learned from society were that you need to earn more money you need to get a better job you need to get a nicer car
01:04:32
nicer holiday those things are signs of success and therefore happiness and it's a myth i think that's the
01:04:39
biggest myth we fall for we think that's what happiness says success is success happiness is
01:04:46
happiness they can sometimes coincide but they don't always but they can do if you back up if you
01:04:53
take a pause you start to do some of the things that we're talking about you
01:04:57
start to have a bit of time to reflect you know solitude stephen is so important
01:05:05
right every bit of our free time now is sucked up like i went to this gorgeous coffee shop
01:05:12
next to your studio just before i came in right now i imagine 15 years ago you go into any coffee shop
01:05:20
in london you'd be standing in the queue you'd be waiting you know there might be five people in
01:05:25
front of you fine you'll be looking around you'll be you might bump into
01:05:29
someone you know you might be daydreaming now what happens if you go into any coffee shop
01:05:35
everyone's head down stuck in their phone right you're looking you're trying to
01:05:40
catch up with your emails just have a quick cheeky look on instagram i'm not criticizing anyone for doing
01:05:44
that but that comes at a cost it means these little micro moments of downtime where your brain is trying to solve
01:05:52
problems for you and process life they're being lost if you're constantly
01:05:56
consuming right if you're constantly consuming content from outside whatever it is
01:06:03
even good content right even nourishing content if you're constantly consuming you're not allowing your own
01:06:11
thoughts and emotions to come up you know every summer now i take a social media break i tried it two years
01:06:17
ago for the first i think three years ago for the first time i took a few days to really get into it then after two
01:06:22
weeks i didn't want to go back on now i'm not anti-social media right i can
01:06:25
see the value that it has i use it to try and spread helpful messaging as you do
01:06:31
but i felt really good and what what i really experienced even as i allowed these deep innermost feelings to come
01:06:37
out i started to figure out what i think what i think not what the world thinks because that's half the problem going
01:06:45
back to what you said that person who's confused right it doesn't know where to start
01:06:49
here's another tip for them see if you can have 10 minutes a day without your phone
01:06:58
without music on right without an app that you're looking at without distraction just sit
01:07:05
maybe with a journal if you want but just see what comes up because often we're so scared of what's
01:07:10
going to come up we distract and i would say you know for me a daily practice of solitude for me typically
01:07:17
it's first thing in the morning is so needed right the way i describe it to people
01:07:23
it's like an early warning system right so when i was a junior doctor in edinburgh i remember being taught
01:07:30
when you're looking after sick patients if you do regular what we call obs so heart rate
01:07:37
respiratory rates um you know temperature depending on what parameters they fit into
01:07:44
we could detect several hours beforehand who was going to end up needing high dependency beds
01:07:50
or intensive care it was like it was really simple concept that by doing these regular checks we can then take a
01:07:57
verse of action and make sure that person doesn't end up going downhill and i see my daily practice of solitude
01:08:05
as my early warning system like it allows me to see what's coming up right i know for years stephen i say
01:08:12
i know i know now but i didn't know then when my stress load was going up work family
01:08:18
pressure i'd feel this real tightness to my right upper back but i was so busy i
01:08:23
didn't even notice it now i notice i know if in the morning when i'm doing my
01:08:27
solitude practice i feel that i'm like oh okay there's stuff going on right what is
01:08:33
there is it work is it emotional and it allows me to intentionally say okay do i need to
01:08:39
cut out some commitments i've got do i need to have a conversation with my wife
01:08:43
about something that's been bothering me and i haven't said anything yet
01:08:46
everything i recommend steven is simple i don't think anything i've suggested
01:08:50
so far costs any money at all none of them actually take that much time i'm really really passionate about
01:09:00
making sure this information is accessible to everyone i've worked in affluent areas i've worked in some very
01:09:07
very deprived areas right and actually we're all of course there are different pressures
01:09:14
but actually we're all having the same universal human experience the same ingredients are there in all of us that
01:09:20
when we apply them they make our lives better no matter where we are right someone when i was working in
01:09:27
order right an area of low socioeconomic status a lot of my patients want benefits very
01:09:34
poor income levels you know you would say a very you know struggling area financially i can't
01:09:41
take away their poverty and their stress from life but if i can help them have 10 minutes
01:09:47
of themselves each morning and do some breathing practices or even write in a journal what they're feeling
01:09:54
that is going to lower their stress load and that means they're going to be better able to show up in their life and
01:10:00
deal with their stresses right so when people say oh health happiness it's the
01:10:04
preserve of the middle classes and the wealthy i disagree i absolutely disagree and i'm so passionate to get that
01:10:12
message across health and happiness can be accessible to everyone yes it can be challenging for some people no
01:10:19
question there could be lots that you want to change there'll be lots that you
01:10:23
ideally would wish it wasn't the way it is but you can choose your response to every single one of
01:10:32
those things you absolutely can and when you learn to do that that's freedom you know what's the
01:10:38
victor frankel quote in between stimulus and response is a space in that space lies your power to choose
01:10:46
your response and with your response lies your growth and your freedom one of the things you touched on there
01:10:54
which was really is really foundational to everything you went on to say was this idea of a morning routine and um
01:11:00
you know when i do q and a's and stuff like that on social media people will
01:11:04
always ask me steve what's your morning routine my morning routine is pretty
01:11:07
shitty i'll be completely honest i would never lie to anybody about that it's
01:11:11
really really shitty and it's inconsistent and it's quite it's unthinking so it's kind of being
01:11:18
dragged into the day um you describe these the 3ms of a really good morning routine what are
01:11:25
those three m's of a good morning routine what can i do today how long is it going to take me and what do you
01:11:29
believe a good morning routine contains yeah it's a big picture of you here i have a bias towards morning routines
01:11:38
because i have found in my own life they've really really helped me so let me just talk about stress for a
01:11:47
moment because this really plays into why i think morning routines are so important
01:11:51
i've got this concept of micro stress doses and stress thresholds so every one of us have got our own unique
01:12:00
personal stress threshold right that depends on your life how you deal with things and what's going on
01:12:06
and what we get to that threshold that's when things start to go wrong that's
01:12:09
when we um we snap at someone we have a fight with our partner our net goes or our
01:12:15
back goes into spasm right that's when you're at your threshold right so
01:12:22
i'm saying to people and i've i've really found this to be true for pretty
01:12:26
much everyone let's say you wake up and you are far away from your threshold
01:12:32
you've had a good night's sleep right so you're feeling you've been good
01:12:37
what's the average morning for a lot of people these days okay let's say the
01:12:40
alarm goes off at 6 30 right so they're in a deep sleep alarm goes off jolts them out of that
01:12:46
sleep they have to get it okay that's micro stress dose or msd number one okay
01:12:50
pick up the phone oh man i'm just gonna put it on snooze you know i need a bit more snooze put it
01:12:56
back six minutes later it goes on again msd number two you need pick up your phone you get i'm
01:13:01
quick you're gonna check email oh man there were these three emails i didn't get back to yesterday oh man i
01:13:07
need to do that msd number three um have a quick look on instagram someone's left you a snarky comment msd
01:13:13
number four then you realize oh man i've been in bed for 10 minutes i have to get
01:13:16
up get ready i've got a guest coming to shoot a podcast with i'm not talking
01:13:19
about your life i'm just saying anyone's life you are talking about mine right
01:13:23
and so here's the point at me ronan each one of those things right is a micro
01:13:27
stress dose and each one of those is getting you closer and closer to that stress threshold the mistake we make
01:13:35
is that when something happens at three o'clock in the afternoon right when that email from your
01:13:40
colleague frustrates you you think it was that email but it wasn't the email it was the fact
01:13:46
that you've already acquired 20 micro stress doses you're right at your threshold you've got no capacity to deal
01:13:52
with it so that email now bothers you so what i suggest to people is many people leave the house in the
01:14:00
morning having already accumulated about 15 micro stress doses so they're already
01:14:05
a lot closer to their threshold than they would have otherwise mean which means they've got less resilience they
01:14:11
won't take much for them to get triggered right so why i think morning routines can be so valuable is they can
01:14:18
reduce how many micro stress doses you're exposed to first thing in the morning so
01:14:23
you are going into your day with much more headroom and much more resilience but i think they're also useful
01:14:32
if you're feeling quite stressed when you wake up and anxious i think they help almost undo the damage of
01:14:38
microstrategies and bring you back to baseline was that clear perfectly clear so that's my kind of
01:14:45
overarching view on why they're so important so for me i know if i do that morning routine yes it
01:14:51
gives me perspective on my life it allows me to reflect but it also um feeds the control leg of the core
01:14:58
happiness stool but it also means that i'm not exposing myself to micro stressors in fact i'm
01:15:04
getting back to baseline or i'm going into negative i'm actually giving myself
01:15:09
a lot more resilience and capability to face the day so i was trying to simplify
01:15:14
things to people so i think a complete morning route scene for me has got these three m's
01:15:20
mindfulness movement mindset and that's how i orientate my own morning routine so i started with
01:15:28
mindfulness now i've been doing this for a few years right and currently my morning routine
01:15:33
is about 30 minutes but that's because i've created a life where i can do that
01:15:39
and it works for me and i get up silly early that's also because my kids have
01:15:43
always been early wises and i know if i don't get that time to myself i'm just not as good a dad and i'm not
01:15:50
as good a husband so my bedtime has got earlier and earlier so i can get up earlier and earlier before my kids do
01:15:57
right so i start with mindfulness which at the moment is a practice of breath work and then meditation
01:16:03
then what i do i go to my kitchen and i put coffee on now very particular with how i do my coffee i weigh out 15 grams
01:16:10
in the french press i pour 250 grams of water and i put a timer on for five minutes
01:16:15
why is that important it's not it's the way i like my coffee but the point is i
01:16:19
know for five minutes my coffee's gonna brew so in those five minutes i don't go on instagram i don't check my
01:16:27
email i do a workout in my kitchen in my pajamas right i'm in my pajamas i'm not to put
01:16:33
on any fancy gear i might do a bodyweight workout i might have a kettlebell kicking around
01:16:38
whatever i feel like i will do and then i get the gorgeous rewards of a hot fresh cup of organic coffee that i like
01:16:46
and i sit there and i'll read something um positive like i've got a few books
01:16:52
kicking around in my living room i'll just pick one that i'm drawn to i'd
01:16:55
probably read for about 10 minutes while sipping coffee something that's not
01:16:59
negative that's uplifting right so that's what it looks like for me now sometimes my daughter is
01:17:04
currently nine she's got a sixth sense that daddy's up and she creeps in with
01:17:08
me if she gets in with me what two things i want to say about that the old wrong good from a few years ago
01:17:14
we got frustrated man i kind of need i want my own space you know why yeah you know i should have got up earlier i
01:17:21
don't do that anymore i'm a lot more compassionate to myself i use that i go
01:17:25
okay great okay great she's here okay okay darling just sit here daddy's just
01:17:29
finishing off my meditation and she said i think okay this is cool like i don't need to look at it as a
01:17:34
problem this is life right if we think life is gonna be great when everything goes our way we're gonna
01:17:41
be waiting a long time so i embrace it now go fantastic and then i also think as a dad what
01:17:47
she's also now seeing daddy prioritizes his health he thinks it's important to look after his mental
01:17:54
well-being every day i'm hoping that she also absorbs some of these ideas as she
01:17:58
grows up but the mindset piece i don't sit there and read if my daughter said
01:18:03
we instead do affirmations together so there's really good research on affirmations in terms of what they do
01:18:08
for us just short positive powerful statement so the one we do together is we just say
01:18:15
i'm happy i'm calm i'm stress free right so the two of us sit there we hold hands
01:18:19
and we say that for a minute at the end of it i feel brilliant she feels amazing
01:18:25
no i get it some people hear that okay that is cheesy as anything and maybe it is but you know what
01:18:31
there's good research on it undergraduate students who did affirmations before their exam perform
01:18:36
better right you know how you program your mind matters so that's what mine looks like
01:18:43
right it used to be about five ten minutes now yeah i can do half an hour right but i've also become aligned i've
01:18:51
now i go to bed earlier right and let's not forget stephen you're at a different
01:18:56
stage in life to me right i'm in my early 40s i'm happily married i've got
01:19:00
two young kids right you're in your late 20s right was i doing morning routines when
01:19:05
i was 29 no i wasn't it's like clue that i text you at 2 a.m last night isn't it
01:19:10
yeah well i woke up i was like oh man like i'm getting up to do my routine and
01:19:13
steve has just gone to bed but but let me tell you about a patient who i saw many years ago
01:19:24
i can't remember how old she was she's probably around 42 really bad skin and i strongly felt that
01:19:30
stress was exacerbating and really aggravating her skin and she said that's actually i don't
01:19:37
have time for any of this stuff right i'm busy i've got two kids i've got to get out to
01:19:41
work and we try and make various things but i managed to persuade her and inspire
01:19:46
her to try a five minute routine and this is what she did she did the three m's in five minutes it's just one minute
01:19:53
of what i call three four five breathing right so you breathe in for three you hold for four and you breathe out
01:20:00
for five any time your out breath is longer than your in-breath you help to lower your body's stress response and
01:20:06
activate its relaxation response okay there's many ways you can do that but i
01:20:11
like this breath that i call the three four five breaths so she did one minute three four five breathing
01:20:15
she did two minutes of yoga right she had some of her favorite sequencing two minutes of yoga
01:20:22
and then she did two minutes of affirmations that's it and she got on with the day
01:20:27
she came to see me a few weeks later and she thought she actually i just feel so much better and her skin complaints
01:20:35
had gone down by over 50 and over the course of the next few months she was hardly getting any flare-ups at all
01:20:40
because it was a ripple effect it wasn't just that but by doing that and giving her that
01:20:46
little bubble of resilience first thing in the morning she would then go out for a walk at
01:20:51
lunch time instead of just sitting in the canteen on her phone she'd go i'm
01:20:54
gonna go for ten minute walk around the block you know it so for me it's just
01:20:59
you showing yourself right at the start of the day you know what i'm worth it i'm worth
01:21:04
spending a bit of time on today and for me i'm a i've got a bias there because if i don't do stuff like that in
01:21:10
the morning i don't do it once the day starts forget it and it's something that might have
01:21:15
value for your audience steven and i you know i guess i'm coming and thinking
01:21:20
steven bartlett successful businessman loads of entrepreneurs listening um thinking about you know business and
01:21:27
stuff and i'm i you know i i kind of want to help people and let's let's zoom into the middle and
01:21:34
movement why is it that i'm able to do a five minute workout every day like i've
01:21:40
really missed a day for three years that's not because i've got more motivation than anyone
01:21:45
else it's because i understand the science of behavior change right i think it's gonna i hope it's
01:21:51
gonna have value for people there's two big rules i've learned about human
01:21:56
behavior number one is if you make something easy you will do it so what's that got to do with my morning
01:22:07
routine well i made it so easy for me to do right i don't need to buy any equipment everything's there i don't
01:22:13
need to get changed i don't need to look up a workout i don't need to do it's it
01:22:17
literally happens because i don't have to think i've made it really easy and to zoom this out to
01:22:23
business for a moment it's reported that when amazon went to one click ordering it's reported their
01:22:29
profits went up by 300 million dollars a year right so let's rewind 10 years when they
01:22:34
didn't have it what did you have to do put in your order go to the next screen
01:22:39
you know type in your card deals go to the next screen confirm audit right every single step is a reason to
01:22:44
procrastinate pull out and not make the purchase so what do they do one click ordering boom before you blinked
01:22:50
something's coming that evening right so they're doing what i think they should
01:22:54
do for their business why do netflix roll one video or one show into the next one
01:23:00
it's not out of the goodness of their own hearts to go oh you know let's help
01:23:03
people no they're using the science of human behavior before you realize it's
01:23:10
12 30 at night i need to go to bed i've got to get it for work you are straight into another
01:23:15
episode so you don't stop that's why youtube roll and see the next video
01:23:19
right so these guys understand human behavior when we as humans try and apply it to our own health we throw it out the
01:23:25
window we think it's got to be hard it's got to be really tough i've got to go
01:23:29
running one hour four times a week and we we again first two weeks in january we managed to do it then we fall
01:23:36
off the wagon because we think motivation is going to last forever and it doesn't and the science is called the
01:23:41
motivation wave motivation comes up motivation goes down plan your behaviors for when your
01:23:47
motivation is down not when it's up then you will still do it so number one is
01:23:52
you make it easy i've made it easy number two which is just as important as where are
01:23:58
you gonna put this behavior you can't just think about it oh i'm gonna i'm
01:24:01
gonna meditate i'm gonna move no you need to be very intentional now every single behavior we do needs a
01:24:08
trigger right so a trigger could be oh i remember to do it sure that works it's just the most
01:24:14
unreliable trigger that exists the next best trigger is like um a notification like uh you know oh you've got to be
01:24:23
here to record a podcast with stephen okay great i know i've got to do that or
01:24:27
you put a post-it note on your fridge that's great but the very best trigger
01:24:33
as evidenced by the research and a lot of this comes from professor bj fogg at stanford instagram was literally
01:24:39
invented in his class as an assignment essentially he has shown that if you stick on your new behavior onto
01:24:48
an existing habit it's much more likely to happen like the coffee like the coffee i don't
01:24:56
need my pa to phone me at five in the morning say hey rongan listen uh you must remember to make your coffee
01:25:02
i don't need my google calendar notification to pop say hey wrong don't don't forget
01:25:06
to make your coffee i'm gonna do that it's locked in as a habit i don't have to give it any
01:25:12
conscience but it's going to happen so therefore if i stick my workout on there
01:25:16
i vastly increase the likelihood then it's going to happen add on to the fact
01:25:20
that i keep kettlebells and dumbbells in my kitchen my wife used to say can we not just put these away in the cupboard
01:25:26
and i said listen babe here's the thing and i've seen this with patients if you
01:25:30
put this stuff out of the way so that the kitchen looks nice right i'm never gonna lift up that weight
01:25:38
out of sight out of mind we need to constantly trigger so the kitchen's not a mess it's just in
01:25:43
the corner there's a kettlebell so as i'm making the coffee i can see it it's
01:25:46
looking at me even if all i do is pick it up to move it i've picked it up and what it does
01:25:51
steven is that on a very on a very base primal level it shows me each morning that i have value that i'm worth
01:26:00
treating with respect you know chapter three the book is all about treat yourself with respect many of us um
01:26:06
as i've done for much of my life don't we struggle with compassion for ourselves we struggle to be kind to
01:26:13
ourselves right but the research is really clear people who are more compassionate to
01:26:17
themselves they're healthier they're happier they're more successful at work we think
01:26:24
we think we've got to beat ourselves up inside to do stuff right it's a myth it's a short term when
01:26:31
it's a long-term fail and there are simple things that we can do quick one as we all know energy
01:26:37
independence and living a little greener has never been more important for a better future it's a journey i've been
01:26:43
on over the last couple of years that i've shared with you sporadically ever
01:26:47
since i sold my range over sport and bought an electric bicycle and there's a
01:26:50
lot of people out there that listen to this podcast that are looking to make that sustainable switch in the things
01:26:56
that run their daily life whether it's their home their car their vehicles whatever it might be so when a good
01:27:02
friend of mine at a company called my energy called jordan told me she was interested in sponsoring this podcast i
01:27:08
jumped at the opportunity so for those of you that don't know my energy are a
01:27:12
uk renewable energy brand whose mission is to increase the usage of green energy
01:27:17
helping people like you and i to save time and money when it comes to making sustainable switches in our lives so if
01:27:22
this resonates with you and you're the type of person that's been looking or
01:27:25
thinking about going on your own sustainability journey i highly recommend checking them out at my
01:27:31
myenergy.com a lot of people when they talk about health and happiness in those topics you
01:27:37
know they tend to focus on things like what we eat you know that seems to be a really big
01:27:42
um factor in health one of the things we've talked about there that i also read about in
01:27:49
your in your work is you would actually suggest that maybe the most foundational
01:27:52
thing to all of our lives and it's kind of clearly one of the things that i've
01:27:55
i've not been so consistent with is sleep so why is sleep so foundational and so
01:28:02
so important i actually read that you said if there was one sort of health recommendation you would make to
01:28:07
everybody it would be to try and get more sleep why do you prioritize that so highly why is that so important
01:28:14
i think the reason why sleep is so important for society at the moment is because of how much we've lost
01:28:22
so depending on which study you read you'll have a slightly different results but essentially compared to
01:28:29
about 60 years ago you know we may have lost up to 25 of our sleep right so on an eight hour
01:28:40
sleep cycle we may have lost you know two hours of sleep right now when you think about what
01:28:46
sleep does for the body and the brain and the mind you'd be like well actually that is
01:28:54
gonna have a consequence so in the short term we all know what does that feel like when we haven't slept well okay do
01:29:02
we feel like our best selves no we're a bit irritable we're a bit moody what
01:29:08
are we like with those close to us when we haven't slept well are we patient
01:29:13
and calm are we a bit ratty a bit angsty what do you crave when you haven't slept
01:29:18
well you don't crave fruit and vegetables and whole foods you crave sugar and cakes and candy right
01:29:25
because your hormones change when you haven't slept properly right you're less
01:29:30
able to resist temptation when you haven't slept right you're much more likely to get
01:29:35
emotionally triggered when you haven't slept so sleep is really really important in
01:29:41
the short term but in the long term sleep deprivation is associated with pretty much every single chronic disease
01:29:47
we have heart disease alzheimer's um autoimmune disease all these things now we're pretty sure
01:29:55
are directly not just associated with sleep deprivation is thought to be causative
01:30:02
right so this is why we think i'm just going to crush it in my 20s 30s you know i'll sleep when i'm dead i'll
01:30:09
sleep later i get there are phases in our life where we have to probably work harder than we would ideally do
01:30:16
we we get opportunities we have to take it we feel we have to take advantage of them
01:30:20
fine i get that i'm not saying you're gonna sleep seven to eight hours every single
01:30:25
night i don't manage to and i do prioritize my sleep but by and large the biggest problem we have with sleep
01:30:33
is that we don't prioritize it we've never lived in a society where there are
01:30:37
this many distractions from sleep a million years ago you didn't have you know what you do it gets
01:30:44
dark you have a campfire you sit around and chat and then yeah you could go off to bed aren't you
01:30:51
it's so true we live as if sleep is the the only optional thing it's the thing
01:30:55
that can we could do one hour two hours three hours but we then over prioritize but i can't miss
01:31:00
that appointment i can't miss that work commitment but the sleep can come and go
01:31:04
it's optional yeah and it's and i get the temptation there's always something
01:31:08
you could do you could watch a youtube video you could watch a new boss series you know i understand that there are
01:31:14
distractions i totally get that but if you are struggling in life if you can't focus as much as you want to at
01:31:24
work if you've tried going on diets before and you can't stick to eating the
01:31:29
right kinds of foods that you're trying to choose you may be better off focusing on your sleep i've helped
01:31:36
people lose weight i've helped people improve so many aspects of their health
01:31:40
by not changing their diet and i'm a big proponent of whole food-based diets
01:31:44
right but i've gone what's the lever i need to turn here not what can i lecture the patient about
01:31:50
what is the lever i need to turn here so i talk about these four pillars of health certainly for physical health
01:31:56
food movement sleep and relaxation and when my first book came out talking about this about five years ago people
01:32:02
say doctor where should i start and i said well look we're all different ask yourself this question ask yourself
01:32:11
which of these four pillars do i need the most help with because we all kind of intuitively know
01:32:18
for me it's probably stress like my diet movement's pretty good i'm pretty good in my sleep but if i could
01:32:24
do more to manage stress that would have a huge impact on my health but we don't
01:32:28
do that we go to our favorite bit right so people who've already pretty good
01:32:32
with their diet they try and make it five percent better negating the fact that they're only sleeping four and a
01:32:36
half hours every night but go to your weakest link make a small change there i'm not talking about seven
01:32:42
eight hours if you can even sleep for 15 minutes more a night you will have a noticeable and
01:32:49
measurable impact on your physiology and the way that you feel and the other thing we're now learning
01:32:54
about um sleep particularly i think it's the rem the rem phase of sleep is this what sleep researchers are
01:33:01
calling emotional first aid why it allows you to process and you know kind of regulate emotions and
01:33:11
memories so we are living in this time of the mental health epidemic i'm very
01:33:15
concerned over what the impact of the last couple years is going to have on people's mental well-being
01:33:21
but a lot of people don't realize that sleep when you sleep more when you sleep of better quality
01:33:29
you actually do emotional first aid you actually are better at processing emotions your relationships will be
01:33:34
better your mood will be better when you slept more so the number one thing we don't do is
01:33:40
prioritize it so for most people if all they do is prioritize it that would be a big start and then i
01:33:46
always think i need to say when i'm talking about sleep i don't want to stress people out because some people
01:33:51
may hear that stephen and go um i know i'm stressed out right i've heard what you just said sleep's gonna
01:33:57
do or i've got a young child i can't sleep through the night that's okay we
01:34:00
all have phases like that this is day in day out over a period of years i'm talking about it as a chronic disease
01:34:07
but there are small things that you can do right getting outside in the morning for
01:34:12
even 10 minutes and seeing natural light that will help you sleep better at night
01:34:18
that is free it is accessible to everyone right why if you think about what i said about a
01:34:25
million years ago we've we have evolved as humans to have a big differential
01:34:30
between our maximum light exposure and our minimum light exposure right so typically in the day we'd be outside and
01:34:38
at night time would be completely dark right so so light is measured in a unit of light called lux
01:34:44
right completely dark room zero lux if you go outside on a cloudy day in the uk overcast cloudy day for 10 or
01:34:54
15 minutes you're going to get about 10 000 looks through your eyes go back on a sunny day you're going to
01:35:01
get about 20 or 30 000 likes through your eyes go into the most brightly lit office
01:35:07
building in the uk you're probably going to get between 500 and 700 lux it's not much even on a
01:35:14
cloudy day you're getting so much more than you would get inside so for some people
01:35:20
all they have to do is get outside in the morning for 10 minutes or even at lunch time go for a walk outside for 10
01:35:27
minutes that will help set what's called your circadian rhythm which helps you
01:35:30
sleep better at night so that's a simple one caffeine's a big one right you know
01:35:35
i love coffee but i don't drink it after midday right i'll drink it in the morning i
01:35:41
won't drink it after midday there are genetic differences between different people and how we process it
01:35:46
for sure but you know by and large half life is six hours so that means if you have a
01:35:52
large coffee at midday at 6 p.m half of that caffeine is going around your brain and it could be at
01:36:01
midnight a quarter could still be going around your brain so this is not about lecturing this is
01:36:06
about hopefully empowering people to go oh maybe that 3pm coffee i take to get me
01:36:13
through the afternoon oh maybe that's why i can't sleep well and then i'm even more tired the next
01:36:19
day and i'm stuck in this vicious cycle where i need the caffeine to keep getting me through and again if
01:36:24
someone's listening to this and they're not sure i would say okay why not try for seven days
01:36:32
only having caffeine in the morning and just see what happens observe do you feel better
01:36:37
does it help do you have more energy great and if you think you're somewhere
01:36:41
and you really think it's a problem you might want to wean down and try seven
01:36:45
days without i never tell my patient to stop drinking coffee or to stop drinking alcohol i want to
01:36:52
help show them the impact it's having right so let's say a patient's um
01:36:58
drinking too much alcohol for their health i want to help persuade them to go for
01:37:03
seven days without and see how they feel right if they can experience how they feel
01:37:09
differently and then they go yeah i love it but you know what the amount of fun i get on a
01:37:15
friday night hanging out with my mates having a few beers it's worth the hangover and the fatigue and the
01:37:21
irritability on saturday if they say that they're happy with that trade-off okay
01:37:28
fine but a lot of people are not aware of the trade-off like with coffee a lot we are
01:37:32
drinking so much we are a nation of caffeine addicts we're a world of caffeine addicts frankly it's a
01:37:37
psychoactive stimulants it's a beautiful one but it's a psychoactive stimulant so i'm all i'm
01:37:42
saying is if you're struggling with your sleep you know you might want to reduce it you
01:37:46
might want to knock it back a bit and there's plenty more we could talk about
01:37:49
with sleep but all i want to say to people is small changes to your sleep make a
01:37:55
difference don't set the goal that's going to be eight hours a night sure if
01:37:59
you can do that wonderful but even 15 minutes more a day will absolutely make a difference
01:38:06
one of the moments in your book that you describe as being really pivotal and you've referenced early as being
01:38:12
pivotal to your life was the moment your child got ill um your six month old child became
01:38:18
unwell and the kind of that became a catalyst in your life for i guess many things can you talk to me about why
01:38:29
that was so um pivotal and and and why when your child became ill you you know that was in part what i understand is
01:38:37
part of the inspiration behind many of the thoughts in the book my son jainam um
01:38:43
getting sick at six months old literally changed the course of my career but i wouldn't be doing what i'm doing
01:38:51
today had that not happened so rewind 2010 i become a father for the first time right super excited right it's amazing
01:39:03
we're new parents everything's going well bloody blahdy blah and that december
01:39:08
um the end of december we were we decided to go on holiday for a week in france i've got friends out there one of them's
01:39:15
got a house out there we were going to go and stay there and we flew out just after christmas my
01:39:20
wife myself and my son and we got to my friend's house they weren't going to be there on the next
01:39:25
day and we meant to sleep downstairs there that was the room that we'd been allocated at my friend's place
01:39:33
and normally my wife would have probably gone and put him to sleep but she said she didn't feel
01:39:38
she wanted to he was a bit sniffly he wasn't um [Music] you know she mother's intuition called
01:39:46
whatever you will she didn't do it anyway we're we're upstairs in this kind
01:39:49
of open plank kitchen i think i'm doing some washing up and then she calls out
01:39:52
to me he says wrong and he's not moving i drop everything turn around see him
01:39:59
and um i think he's probably choking because he's had a lot of phlegm all day so i
01:40:04
take him turn him over i try and clear his airway nothing's happening uh i probably froze i can't quite
01:40:12
remember now with clarity but my said look we just got to get into the hospital so we got to the hospital which
01:40:17
is two minutes away we got in and you could see how scared the uh medics were because it's not uncommon
01:40:26
for children at the age of six months to have a convulsion it's something we call
01:40:29
a febrile convulsion there's a fever that causes the convulsion but he had no fever they were like well
01:40:37
why on earth is a six-month-old kid just stopped moving and had a convulsion so he got blue lighted down there
01:40:45
because it was a little mountain resort down to the valley my wife's going in
01:40:49
the ambulance i'm like following in the car thing what on earth is happening we
01:40:53
get there you know he's motionless we're super scared we thought we might lose him that
01:40:57
night he had two lumbar punctures he had all kinds of blood tests then it turns out later that he had very low levels of
01:41:04
calcium in his blood which is why he had a convulsion like well why has that happened and i
01:41:08
said look we're still waiting for more tests a few hours later it comes back
01:41:12
he's got no vitamin d in his body well very low levels of vitamin d that's why his calcium drops
01:41:20
thankfully he got a calcium infusion he got vitamin d five days later you know we get
01:41:24
discharged but why did that have such a big impact on me well hey of course i nearly my son
01:41:31
nearly died but i thought i'd let him down that's the truth demon i thought my my son has nearly died from
01:41:40
a preventable vitamin deficiency i've gone to one of europe's most prestigious medical schools edinburgh
01:41:46
i've got an immunology degree i've done my specialist exams done my general
01:41:50
practice exams with all my so-called qualifications i was unable to prevent my son from
01:41:57
getting sick so i took it personally as if i had messed up and actually weirdly enough a few weeks before that i'd
01:42:04
become aware of vitamin d i'd gone i remember thinking shouldn't my son be on
01:42:08
vitamin d this was years ago i remember phoning my wife from work said hey can you go and take him to the doctor we're
01:42:14
told as doctors not to make medical decisions for our own family it's not deemed good practice i sent her a
01:42:20
protocol to just show that to the doctor say your husband's a gp you know he's
01:42:25
just thinking about about this and the gp just laughed her out said you could have just printed you
01:42:31
could just type this up on word this is nonsense he doesn't need anything anyway two weeks later he's in france
01:42:36
convulsion nearly dies why does that have such a big impact on me why has it had such a big impact on
01:42:43
me because i thought i'd failed right my whole identity is is around being perfect at
01:42:51
that point so i want perfection in every aspect of my life oh i wanted perfectionary
01:42:58
aspects of my life and of course my darling son i thought so guilty stephen i became
01:43:04
obsessed right modern medicine saved his life but that's it modern medicine often stops at
01:43:10
that point i i was asking him well what happens if he's not had victim and d in
01:43:13
a system for the last few months which he didn't vitamin d is critical for our immune
01:43:19
system it's critical could this be why he's got eczema could this be contributing fast there's a look he's
01:43:24
he's fine now and i thought this is not good enough for me so i made it my mission
01:43:30
i said to myself internally i don't think i ever verbalized it out i said i am going to get my son back to
01:43:37
full health as if this had never happened i became obsessed i'd read up about
01:43:41
vitamin d that led me to the gut microbiome that led me to all kinds of stuff that i never learned at medical
01:43:47
school that i've used to help him he is a thriving happy healthy strong 11 year
01:43:54
old boy okay the principles and the tools that i've learned are what i've been using with my
01:43:59
patients for years it's what i used on doctor in the house on bbc one to show
01:44:03
people all around the country and it's gone to 70 countries around the world that all
01:44:08
kinds of conditions type 2 diabetes fibromyalgia panic attacks anxiety irritable bowel syndrome can all be
01:44:15
either reversed or significantly improved by making small changes to our lifestyle
01:44:21
that moment drove me to learn all this stuff which i now share and help you know arguing millions of people now
01:44:34
and for years i wished it didn't happen but i've i've changed my view
01:44:42
for two reasons one reason was that guilt i felt stephen i carried in as a dad he doesn't need his dad feeling guilty
01:44:52
that doesn't make me a calm present attentive father that brings baggage into the
01:44:58
relationship and i i could see that well i i'd like to think particularly these days i've got a high degree of
01:45:04
self-awareness i could see that see wrong this is guilt it's not his fault he doesn't need a guilty dad so that was
01:45:10
a stimulus to go inward and figure some of this stuff out to figure out where does this come from but it all plays in
01:45:16
stephen or you know as we talk you can see the theme in the start of our conversation in the
01:45:21
middle now talking about my son i have expected perfection of myself in everything i've ever
01:45:28
done right that's been my identity with my son i felt as though i let him down
01:45:35
now i've let go of pretty much all of that it i say pretty much because it still pops
01:45:41
in so in my role as a father i think i do a good job they're kind considerate
01:45:45
kids they're happy but could i do a better job probably i'm not going to beat myself up on that
01:45:52
anymore but i want to work on that so now i look back and i've now told myself
01:45:59
a different story right this is true you can tell me if you think it's true i now think that was meant to happen
01:46:07
that happened so that daddy could learn all of the um tools that i've learned to help him
01:46:15
and now help thousands of people hundreds of thousands you know as i say arguing millions
01:46:23
i wouldn't have had those learnings had it not happen now when i started thinking like that i would think yeah
01:46:28
but why did he have to go through that in order for me to learn this but again that's me putting a story what do you
01:46:35
mean go through it maybe he doesn't know he's been through anything maybe that's
01:46:39
his life journey maybe he's going to learn loads from that experience do you know what i mean and that's the
01:46:46
perspective choice i guess you you talked about earlier it's almost like making an incident a negative
01:46:50
incident the hero of your own life as opposed to be you know shrouding it with guilt and blame and
01:46:57
resentment so yeah it's choosing a happiness story about it because ultimately i can't change the reality of
01:47:03
what happened whether i wanted it to or not of course at that moment would i want it to happen
01:47:08
no of course not but now given that it can't be changed given that it is has happened and is now in
01:47:14
the past how now to show up in my everyday life and be happy be content help people serve people serve
01:47:24
my children as a good father well it's to let go of that and move on choose a
01:47:29
happiness story we can all do it it's hard sometimes but it doesn't mean it's
01:47:33
not possible and what is your mission now as you look ahead to the future you've achieved so
01:47:38
much across such a diverse a range of pursuits you know everything from your tv to podcast to books and
01:47:46
everything in between your work as a gp your medical practice everything what is
01:47:50
your mission now as you look ahead to your future the mission that i have stated publicly
01:47:57
for the last few years has been over the course of my career i want to help 100 million people
01:48:05
live better lives i want to help them with their health and their happiness but you know
01:48:13
over the last few months that's not been sitting that well with me anymore i mean i'm really good friends with my
01:48:19
videographer gareth who films every podcast that i do and we've been chatting a lot about it
01:48:26
and you know when i first stated that publicly for the first time i was so scared well people think he's got a big
01:48:33
ego you know i did i didn't i didn't want partly didn't want to share that i
01:48:38
thought what will people think of me right why that's been so good for me is it's helped me
01:48:47
make decisions as you know the amount of incoming into our inboxes and what we could be doing is
01:48:56
vast so the hundred millifigure allows me to think okay is this going to get me closer to
01:49:02
100 million or not so i think it's served a really good role i think missions can do at particular
01:49:08
moments in life but we don't need to be stuck to them forever so you know that figure you know i thought
01:49:15
well five million people each week are watching doctor in the house in bbc one okay
01:49:20
that means if only one percent of people watch that and make a change in their life that's a
01:49:28
lot of people right and now that's gone to 70 countries around the world i'm
01:49:32
like okay so this is how you can use the media to amplify your message and help people
01:49:40
with hopefully a strong simple message all over the world right now i think and and that's helped me do things like
01:49:47
you know i'll be honest like when i started my podcast it was just a bit of fun right i didn't
01:49:53
have a name i didn't have a logo um i just thought okay this would be cool i
01:49:58
didn't know what the name was when i was interviewing people like the first six interviews
01:50:04
but it's evolved into you know like your show i guess like a juggernaut show which has a huge
01:50:09
following that impacts the lives of hundreds of thousands of people each week right so
01:50:16
the mission served me but it's not sure like i don't have a new replacement one
01:50:21
at the moment but i almost think 100 million is limiting well why why a hundred million right that's not said
01:50:28
with any level of arrogance it's just like well every human has unlimited potential you know this is
01:50:33
what i always try and do i want every person who reads my books or listens to my podcast to feel that they can be the
01:50:39
architect of their own health and happiness that's not me diminishing the fact that your
01:50:46
environment that society plays a role no but even if it does i still want that person to feel that
01:50:53
they have agency and they've got an element of control so if i think about short-term goals
01:51:00
you know i very much want this book to be a success not so that it can feed my ego but because i genuinely think the 10
01:51:07
chapters the 10 life lessons are universal so whoever you are wherever you are in life i think these
01:51:14
10 chapters these 10 lessons hold true for everyone if anyone disagrees i'd welcome a conversation about it but i
01:51:22
really think they do and i think they're sort of things that people can revisit
01:51:26
they use them then in a few months when life goes off track they can come back that's one immediate goal
01:51:33
but i think going beyond that the mission's about conversation right conversation matters
01:51:43
long-form conversation like what you do on this show like what i do on my show that matters we need that now more than
01:51:50
ever everything is reduced down to that that that smallest sound bite that we can get out there
01:51:57
the problem is that comes at a cost because we lose perspective it doesn't make us
01:52:02
compassionate it makes us angry right people are isolated there's a lack of community people feel lonely it's
01:52:09
driving them to junk happiness habits i've got so many young men who've come
01:52:13
to see me who've got pornography addiction right they can't even look me
01:52:17
in the eye when they tell me they're that ashamed and embarrassed they've not
01:52:21
told anyone they've not taught their friends they've not told their parents
01:52:24
there will be someone stephen listening to this right now who's got an issue with pornography and they don't
01:52:32
know where to turn picking up on that point of loneliness i think in our society we view loneliness
01:52:38
as a sad thing in the sense that when someone's lonely it almost feels like it's a sign of
01:52:44
their inadequacy or they're like lack of attraction or then they're not a
01:52:47
compelling human being they weren't able to forge interactions so although i i've now come to learn that
01:52:53
it's in fact a signal to get back to our tribes we have we don't treat it like other
01:52:58
signals we don't treat it like thirst we don't treat it like hunger we will say
01:53:01
if we're thirsty or we're hungry but we won't say if we're lonely because
01:53:05
it's stigmatized right um i came to learn from the research i've done and i saw similar stats which were
01:53:11
terrifying in your work is that loneliness isn't a sad thing it's actually a really dangerous thing
01:53:18
so can you speak to the the negative consequence of loneliness the way society is set up now is making us
01:53:26
lonely we've moved away from work we've moved away from our families we don't have the
01:53:30
tribes around us and it's very very damaging for our health right some research suggests that the
01:53:38
feeling of being lonely is as harmful as smoking 15 cigarettes per day one five right
01:53:44
increases our risk of heart disease strokes you're more likely to die earlier
01:53:50
if you feel lonely why is that right think about it a million years ago you're with your tribe you're with your
01:53:57
community right if a wild predator is approaching the tribe your stress response kicks into gear that's a good
01:54:06
thing it's going to help you take action to keep you safe brilliant all kinds of things happen in
01:54:12
the body when that happens loneliness is also a signal think back a million years ago if you were out by
01:54:19
yourself you don't have your tribe around you your body is clever your body knows you
01:54:25
are at risk you are vulnerable to attack so it activates your stress response your
01:54:31
blood sugar goes up your blood pressure goes up your blood becomes more prone to
01:54:34
clotting right you're amygdala your emotional brain goes on to high alert so
01:54:39
you're hyper vigilant you become anxious right all these things happen when you
01:54:44
feel lonely right you have physical changes in your body now loneliness is hard if people are suffering i understand
01:54:53
right i really understand but small things make a difference you can start off by saying hi
01:55:01
to the barista at the coffee shop right but maybe you've got a friend you haven't spoken to in a while
01:55:06
maybe you've got busy with your life they've got busy with their life give
01:55:08
them a call right that's all it takes it's a ripple effect start small and i promise you
01:55:15
will start to feel the difference dr ronan i i have to i couldn't thank you enough for the wisdom and for the
01:55:21
time that you've given me today it's really really really special i sit here
01:55:24
sometimes with guests and i think um you know i think you know they've written a book and it's very nice and
01:55:28
everything but having experienced the way that you've um done the self-work and having
01:55:36
had a taste of the way that you have empathy in your approach to causing behavioral
01:55:43
and lifestyle change to people i i feel like this book is just critically important you know
01:55:50
it's funny because i was thinking i'm going to end this podcast by giving the
01:55:52
book a compliment but i don't think i have to i think if people see who you are today the wisdom the empathy the
01:55:59
experience the vulnerability i think any person that is sound of mind and that wants to improve their life
01:56:05
will know that this book is critically important to them that it is inclusive that is
01:56:09
that is relatable and that it will hold their hand through change in a in a way which is empathetic and that's that
01:56:16
those are my favorite books and i was sat here and i'm going to be completely
01:56:19
honest because i don't [ __ ] people i just don't say things i don't believe
01:56:21
them i was sat here thinking [ __ ] steve because i've only been i've only i was
01:56:25
only given a small taste of the book by your publisher i need to read this book and if that's the
01:56:31
impact you've had on me i know it's going to be the impact you've had on my my listeners so thank
01:56:37
you because you know that really really is you know understanding where we are in the world
01:56:40
in culture we need more books like this we have a tradition on this podcast which is the last guest writes a
01:56:47
question for the next guest and i don't actually get to read on my mother's life
01:56:50
i don't read it until i open the book so i've just opened the book and seen what
01:56:53
our last guest has written so my last guest wrote the question and i've not read it
01:56:58
yet so here we go but he's got great handwriting so what is something that people value
01:57:04
that you no longer value an attachment to truth i no longer value being right i no longer value having to know the
01:57:23
right answer i no longer value thinking this is the truth and i'm gonna hold on
01:57:29
to this at all costs and i think many people do i now value curiosity and being the
01:57:37
learner i just want to learn i want to explore i'm happy for pre-existing assumptions
01:57:44
i've had in my life to be shown to be incorrect i'm not attached to being right i'm not
01:57:49
attached to being wrong what i am attached to is learning and that's working for me at the moment
01:57:58
dr rongan thank you you are simply amazing and you are really the gift that keeps on giving so i can't wait to read
01:58:03
the book in its entirety happy mind happy life 10 simple ways to feel great every day thanks for having
01:58:10
me thanks i can't wait wait to read the book in its entirety happy mind happy life 10 simple ways to
01:58:17
feel great every day thanks for having me [Music] [Music] [Music] you