5 Habits That Will Make 2025 Your Best Year Yet | Dr. Rangan Chatterjee

habit number one ask yourself the following three questions every single day it will take you minutes to do so but the impact is going to be quite profound okay so the first question is what is one thing I deeply appreciate about my life the second question is what is the most important thing I have to do today and the third question is what quality or qualities do I want to showcase to the world today now I'm going to break down those three questions I'm going to explain why they're so impactful but before I do that

I want to contrast this kind of start of the day with a more reactive and unintentional start of the day right so I've come to realize that a lot of the time our thoughts our behaviors our actions are down stream from the content we consume okay so let's imagine this maybe you don't have to imagine too hard let's imagine that you wake up in the morning your smartphone is your alarm and immediately you start going on the news you see the negativity that's going on in your country or many countries around the world you then

go on to social media and see all kinds of negativity and conflict and then you go on to your work email and realize that there a few things you didn't get done the day before let's just imagine that that's your start what does that do well it starts of your day with negativity I don't think it takes much to persuade you or convince you that if you start your day with that kind of negativity is it any wonder that you're going to have a more negative outlook on the world does it really surprise you that

that kind of start of the day might mean that you're more reactive with your partner that you have a ra with one of your work colleagues that a very simple email that gets sent to you by your boss gets misinterpreted I don't think it takes much to really draw that connection because if you start your day with negativity because the human brain has a negativity bias which has been very good for us for most of our Revolution the problem is it sets the tone for the rest of the day whereas if you start the day

with positivity now I'm not talking about tox positivity here about pretending that everything is okay in our lives with the wider worlds it's not about that at all but it's about giving yourself a sense of control each day we know that people who have a strong sense of control they do better in life they're healthier they're happier they have better quality relationships that sense of control is really important so answering these three questions is going to give you that sense of control in a world that is fundamentally uncontrollable okay so if you can start the

day with that first question what is one thing I deeply appreciate about my life it's going to really help you I know it sounds simple but that's a question that ultimately has gratitude at its heart and there is so much research showing the benefits of gratitude there are studies shown that a daily practice of gratitude can help our moods can help reduce symptoms of anxiety depression can help you be more productive answering this question each day will help you start to take action no matter the current state of your life no matter who we are

pretty much all of us can say we're grateful for at least one thing and I know that some people around the world are living very very difficult lives but I honestly believe that most of us can be grateful for at least one thing and if you start the day by writing that down and really thinking about it you know I'm grateful that I have a job I'm grateful that I can afford to put the heating on and buy food for my children I'm grateful for my wife whatever it might be I promise this will start

to change how you feel about yourself and the world and in this video I'm not going to go through all the research on gratitude I've done that in some of my other videos here on this channel but just know that a daily practice of gratitude is not only free fre it has been shown to have so many positive impacts in fact some of the studies on gratitude said that if you just do it for 7 days you can have positive impacts up to three months later it really is quite remarkable okay so there's three questions

to talk you today with the first question is what is one thing I deeply appreciate about my life second question what is the most important thing I have to do today I love this question in many ways I call this the anti-business question look I know many of us feel overwhelmed we feel busy we've got too much going on we know that chronic stress is on the rise we know that rates of burnout are on the rise there was a really alarming study here in the UK suggesting that 88% of UK workers have experienced a

degree of burnout in the past two years that is a quite worrying statistic about the state of our lives and the state of culture in this country and in many countries around the world now answering this question is not suddenly going to change how much work you have to do but it is going to change your relationship with your day this question forces you to make a decision each morning the power is in making the decision what I don't want you to do is procrastinate and go yeah I've got to work deadline I've got to

take my kids to the after school club I've got to do the shopping I've got to cook a meal sure all of these things are important but the Magic in this question is that you make a decision now if you're skeptical just hear me out okay if you're skeptical I want you to try answering this question for the next seven days first thing in the morning right I don't want you to believe me I want you to believe yourself answer that question and act on it for the next seven days and just see if your

life doesn't start to change for the better I still haven't seen a single person where by answering that question they've not started to feel better about themselves in the world because you make a decision you take action and that daily action starts to build momentum which is one of the most powerful forces for change now I don't need to take too long over this question okay I give you an example of how it looks to me a few days ago I had a really important work deadline so in the morning I said the most important

thing I do today is meet that work deadline yesterday I wrote down because it was a working from home day I wrote down first thing in the morning and I do this every morning when my children come home from school today I want to make sure I put my laptop down so that I can be fully present to talk to them and hear what they have to tell me okay today in the morning I said actually I've been busy for the last few days I've not spent that much time with my wife tonight once the

kids have gone to sleep let me make sure that my wife and I spend a bit of time together chatting and catching up now these are small things right but by setting that intention first in the morning I've actually gone and done those things each day and here's the magic if for seven days or let's say even 30 days you write down the most important thing you have to do that day and then you go ahead and do it it is inconceivable that your life will not feel different it is inconceivable that you won't feel

better about yourself I do it myself and I've seen it with so many people it's a simple question that has a really powerful cumulative effect now why I think that question is so important in the modern world is because today many of us feel like our to-do lists are never done right you could complete your email inbox you could get all your emails done and go to the kitchen make yourself a cup of tea and in that time where you made the tea and drunk it you could have received another 10 emails there's nothing you

can do about that it's the nature of our modern communication so you have to set the rules you have to say what's most important to you because if you think that you'll do the important things in life when everything else is done you're going to be waiting a long time everything else is never done there's always something else to do so this is a very powerful question that encourages you each day to focus and little by little your life will start to change okay so that's the second question the third question is which quality do

I want to showcase to the world today now the reason this question is so important is because many of us are living quite unintentional lives and think the way we are is who we are and the way we have to stay but it isn't most of who we are or much of Who We Are simply repeated behaviors we think we're reactive we think we're the type of person to get stressed no we don't have to be at all if you take a moment each morning to visualize and actually write down who is it that I

want to be today for me when I'm answering that question I often put things down like I want to showcase the quality of patience to the world today or compassion to the world today and why it's so important is by taking a moment to write that down that morning and just think about how I might show that to the world it means I'm much more likely to exhibit that quality to the world when I face problems or adversity if I've said in the morning what I want to be patient today well if I'm tempted right

to not be patient at the coffee shop or at work or to react to an email there's a little reminder on my head say no you were going to be patient today and it sounds simple it doesn't mean you'll be perfect every day it really doesn't some days you won't but by answering this question each day you're constantly reminding yourself who is the person I want to be who is the person that I know I can be and this sounds really really simple and it is but I can assure assure you if you do it

you will start to change the people around you will start to notice okay so there's a lot more I could tell you about these questions there's a whole video here on my channel a one hour video where I go through these questions in a lot more detail but for the purpose of this video habit number one is to start each day with those three questions it will take you less than five minutes you can do it whilst having a cup of tea or coffee if you want or on the way to work whatever it might

be but don't just hear this information and think yeah that sounds like a good idea nothing will change in your life if you don't take action so answer those three questions if you're thinking three questions is too much okay start with one of them which one of those questions spoke to you the most which one did you get a sense wow that could be quite an important question for me just start there and if 30 days feels like too much do it for seven days and pay attention to how you feel when you are are

answering those questions compared to when you're not habit number two stop listening to experts now I need to explain right I need to explain because I as a medical doctor would be considered an expert and sure I have a level of expertise in my training and my many years of clinical practice that is true but I still don't know what's best for for you like I can't do I don't know your life I believe that you actually know what's best for you better than me and I think one of the biggest problems these days and

why so many people are struggling is because we've outsourced our inner expertise to other people we're now in a position we're now in a world where we've been bombarded by information health information let's say okay on one level this is a good thing 20 30 years ago health information could only be gotten from you know a few select books or from doctors or from universities but the Advent of the internet has changed everything now anyone can have an opinion and can put out their expertise online and don't get me wrong I think that's a good

thing I really do think that is a very very good thing but there's also a potential downside and the down downside is that we are exposed to so many different opinions that many people just don't know who to believe anymore is that something you have faced in your own life have you ever been confused by the opinions of experts if so let me know in the comments I genuinely would love to know because this is something I'm so so passionate about now sometimes people will say well if you're going to get health advice make sure

it's from a qualified expert here's the problem with that piece of advice you could listen to a podcast or a YouTube video or read a Blog by 10 different medical experts and they could give you 10 different opinions so you're following the advice to listen to the expert but the experts all have different opinions I get this on my podcast my podcast feel better live more has been running now for almost seven years okay we're just approaching conversation number 500 which is amazing and one thing I've noticed because I like to have a variety of

different voices and views on my show one thing I've noticed is that if I have a really well credentialed expert talking about wellbeing or let's say diet one of them may have a certain view on what the best diet is and another one might have a different View and then what often happens whether it be in the YouTube comments or the Instagram DM people will say Dr chassis I'm confused I don't know which expert I should trust and I think that's the wrong question I don't think the question should be which expert should I trust

I think the question should be why do I no longer trust myself I want to I want to explain what I mean by that right I'm not saying ignore the opinions of experts I'm really not listen to what people have to say but then put it through your own filter only you know how that advice is landing for you right my latest book is called make changed at last and in chapter one I talk about this idea of trusting yourself and how we need to get back in tune with our own bodies and what our

bodies are trying to tell us and in that chapter there's a case study from a patient I once saw and that patient I think she was 54 years old and she was an avid consumer of health information online but she likes to listen to podcasts and read blogs and she really wanted to engage and be proactive about her health and she had read and heard an experts say that you should have 30 different plant Foods a week right so she was trying her best to do this by herself and every time she was doing it

she'd get bloated constipated she'd have abdominal cramps and she kept reading this advice from different experts and she started to feel like a face yeah now this is the big problem when we stop trusting ourselves and we put our faith in external experts or we put too much faith in external experts I should say is that if something's not working we think we're the failure we think for some reason I can't follow the perfect advice that that expert has dispensed to me and we start to have guilt and shame I've seen this over and over

again this is why I'm so passionate about this idea now I saw that lady she told me what she had been doing and I said to her look no peace of Health advice no matter how good works for every single person it may be that this is not the right approach for you certainly at this stage in your life and so I helped her experiment with different ways of eating and over a few weeks we discovered together that when she's on a more low carb style of eating and she only has 5 to 10 plant

Foods a week she's thriving when she was eating like that she started to lose weight like a bit of excess weight that she wanted to lose she had more energy her sleep was better she had more Vitality all her digestive symptoms had gone and when I checked her blood tests they were all looking absolutely perfect now that doesn't mean the expert who dispensed that advice online was wrong no it doesn't that advice is probably going to be super helpful for many people but not for everyone and that's the whole point about this habit that I

want you to think about bringing into your life I want you to start trusting yourself a little bit more okay not everything has to come from external experts I believe and I've seen this with patients over the years they know when they're on the right diet for them how do they know because their body tells them they feel it with the way they feel their energy their cognition their focus their relationships how calm they are they feel it and so one practice that's going to help you start listening and trusting yourself is a daily practice

of solitude now don't think about that as a negative thing this is time for yourself if you are constantly consuming information from the outside each day like I mentioned in habit one you're never going to start to hear what your own body is telling you right so I would say for five or 10 minutes a day minimum can you spend a bit of time with yourself and this can literally be anything that you want not what I want you to do what you want this could be 10 minutes of yoga it could be journaling maybe

those three questions I've just mentioned they could be part of your daily journaling practice it could be meditation it could be a 20 minute walk around your block without also looking at your phone it could even be in the morning you sit with a cup of coffee or a cup of tea whatever you like and mindfully drink that coffee without consuming information on your phone or online anything that allows your innermost thoughts to come up now this may take a bit of time because if you've spent many many years not listening to your body signals

and trying to get all your advice from outside yeah it may take a bit of time sorry to interrupt if you're enjoying this video and want to dive deeper into the topic of sleep I have created a free special guide containing my top five science back tips to help you get your best night sleep and reduce fatigue if you want to get hold of this free guides all you have to do is click on the link in the description box below but I've Got a Friend for example who loves the sun salutation sequence in yoga

okay he's done yoga on off for years but over the past couple of years he's really committed to a 10-minute morning practice what he tells me and I experienced that myself with my own personal morning practice is that by keeping the 10-minute yoga practice the same each day he starts to realize when he start to feel different so on some days his yoga practice feels really fluid he feels flexible and free whereas on other days the same move start to feel tight and restricted and he doesn't feel as though he's got any flexibility at all

and by doing that practice every day it helps him get to know himself better for example if he's feeling tight and not very fluid he knows it's a sign that there's too much stress building up in his life that maybe he's working too hard maybe there's an important conversation in one of his relationships that he has to have your body is always giving you signals the question is have you taken time to listen now there's much more I could say on this topic and if you're interested let me know below and I'll make a whole

video on this because I think it's really really important and if you do let me know specifically what you want to know but generally the idea here is that I think these days we're overly listening to experts we're not listening to ourselves enough and a very simple way to start to change that is to have a daily practice of solitude we are quite literally killing ourselves with Comfort many of the conditions and diseases I see both physical health and mental health are caused by an excess of comfort so today if you want to thrive if

you want to be resilient you have to intentionally introduce discomfort into your life so in this video I want to share with you the uncomfortable truth about life and show you how you can live longer healthier and happier now you've got to understand that we're wired for comfort as humans life used to be uncomfortable so we try to make things easier but the problem is I would say in the last 50 years something has changed in society before that our desire for Comfort was helping us now we've got to a point where Comfort is killing

us just think about what you can do today that you couldn't do in the past you could be sitting at home on your sofa watching television and at the same time you could go to an app on your phone and order some fast food delivery you could do your shopping we can even socialize with friends all from the comfort off our chair and for all of that you don't actually have to leave your house that's a life of comfort that actually ends up being a life of discomfort the wrong kind of discomfort the discomfort that

comes when you're ill when you're in pain when your health is deteriorating when you can't do the things that you want to do that's a different form of discomfort let's just think about what we had to do in the past to get by in order to simply survive and be you had to do things that today we would consider uncomfortable we literally had to go out acquire food bring the food back cook it and then consume it you couldn't be sedentary and sit on that sofa for the entire day just couldn't do it you had

to move your body so today you have to intentionally introduce discomfort into your life the most helpful method I found about introducing discomfort regularly is to create some rules around discomfort now the incredible thing about rules is that they help to automate our Behavior so if you make a rule and say I'm always going to do this in this situation you don't have to think about it every time so I'll give you an example from my own life I introduce this rule I would guess about 5 years ago and the rule is this always take

the stairs it was a really powerful rule because it means that my default becomes I take the stairs in my local supermarket if I drive there which I often do right I have a rule that I always take the stairs I don't take the elevator I don't take the lift it's a rule that I apply in my life when I'm at an airport I will never take the escalator I will always take the stairs even if I've got bags with me when I check into a hotel I'll always look for the stairs instead of taking

the elevator now I say always let me be clear what I mean by that I don't always take the stairs 100% of the time but by making that a rule I would guess that 90 to 95% of the time I do my default becomes taking the stairs and I can bet you if I didn't have a rule in place I'd internalized the percentages would be way different if I had to ask myself every time there's stairs and a lift which one I'm going to take what do I feel like taking today and the status is

not going to win it right most of the time the lift is going to win it a I'll just take the lift oh I'll just take the lift today but before you know it you've taken the lift 10 or 20 times in a row right one thing I didn't mention at the start but I think it's really important is that look not everyone is physically able to go upstairs right if that's you I get it this may not be the most applicable rule for you but if we just zoom out for a minute instead of

getting bogged down with the actual rule itself just use the ideas use the principles go okay what is the state of my life how comfortable am I and where can I introduce discomfort in a way that appeals to me and in a way that I think I can stick to and that's the uncomfortable thing to do right throughout our whole Evolution we wanted to make things easier in fact I had this wonderful conversation with this Swedish psychiatrist Dr Anders Hansen on my podcast and he shared with me that our brain wants us to be lazy

anxious and fat right it wants us to be anxious so that we can look out for danger because that was really really important it also wants us to be lazy and fat when food was there when food was around we'd eat it in fact we as humans have mechanisms to put on fat that was a very helpful mechanism in the past there's lots of food around there's lots of fruit in the summer let's gorge on it let's eat it let's store those excess calories as fats so that we've got reserves of energy for the winter

unfortunately these days that winter never comes it wants us to conserve energy wherever we can I mean let's think about this modern invention exercise now there's very good reasons why we've invented it but just imagine going to one of your ancestors 50,000 years ago and make the case to them why you would just go for a run for 10 kilom and then come home without anything in your hands I mean you wouldn't do it you wouldn't expend energy in that kind of way you would conserve energy you would go out running when you had to

go on a hunt right you had to go and get something that's how we're wired so what we really need to do is put things into our life that help us navigate and counterbalance that Natural Instinct that's why it's so important that we have our own personal rules for discomfort right I've shared one of mine always take the stairs it's such a powerful rule I've shared that in companies in schools in all kinds of places and it's very very powerful because it changes your default now physical inactivity is one of the leading causes of death

across the entire planet and if you think about that through the lens of comfort life is more comfortable these days for most of us I appreciate not everyone in the worlds but for many of us life has never being this materially comfortable and therefore if you don't have a practice a regular system for bringing in discomfort you're really going to struggle now mention these diseases of discomfort let's take one of them type two diabetes right type two diabetes is a condition where our blood sugar starts to rise over a period of years and we can

no longer keep it down in its normal range and because the blood sugar is high it goes around the body it gets deposited in different places in our eyes and our nerves in our kidneys and causes damage and also causes early death now you could not really get type 2 diabetes in a world of discomfort if you had to move your body each day to get food and then bring the food back and cook it it's very unlikely you would develop a condition like type two diabetes especially the food that was available was natural unprocessed

Whole Foods which is of course what it used to be but in this world today where we have highly processed food available 24 hours a day in many different places right remember we're wired to want to consume and that's why I think so many people are struggling because what we have to do today is work against our brains Natural Instincts so always take the stairs yes it helps you physically right it helps you get physically stronger you're moving your body weight Against Gravity you work your quads your glutes your heart muscle right you're getting stronger

physically but I think these discomfort rules also do something very powerful psychologically because you're choosing to take the uncomfortable option when a compil one is there for you and I think that's something really really powerful it's showing your body and your brain boss no you're in charge you're not going to be a victim to your brain's natural desires you're going to take charge and go no I'm not going to do that because that will not lead to me being healthy and happy that will cause me problems another statistic which I found really alarming is when

we think about our children today there's a major study done I think they looked at over 25 million children in different countries and they basically looked at at how quickly they can run a mile now remarkably today on average it takes children 90 seconds longer to run a mile than it did in the 1980s that is a staggering statistic 90 seconds is a long time so in just 40 or 50 years our physical strength and fitness has dramatically gone down because life is much more comfortable right so you got to think about where can you

bring this in so I mentioned one always take this as I think it's a powerful rule it's changed my life it's changed the lives of many of my patients I know it can change your life if you introduce it but there's other rules we can think about right think about discomforts you can think about the cold many of us live in temperature controlled houses temperature controlled cars on the way to work and we don't have to face the cold anymore and of course there's a big Trend these days about exposing yourself to cold water I

don't think everyone has to do that I don't think you have to do all of these rules what I'm trying to do is give you options right one option could be at the end of your daily warm shower you do 30 seconds of cold Okay this may appeal to you it may not appeal to you there are some benefits reported in the literature for sure some Studies have shown that people who take a 30-second cold shower each day at the end of their hot shower report less sick days over a three-month period than those who

don't that's quite interesting are their effects on our immune system but again I think the powerful benefits really are psychological that're you choosing intentionally to do something uncomfortable when you don't have to and I think that's where the gold is I really do you show yourself who boss you show yourself that you're resilient you show yourself that you don't have to be at the whim of your brains inter internal desires you can override them I think this is one of the main reasons why things like tough Ms Ultra marathons wild swimming wild camping why these

things are becoming more and more popular because I think we as humans instinctively know that this Comfort these comfortable lives are not good for us right I'm not saying get rid of your comfort we all like a warm house a comfortable sofa no I'm saying enjoy that enjoy that indulge in it but also make sure there's a bit of discomfort in your life yes there are physical benefits there are massive psychological benefits as well it's really interesting there were some studies done in Harvard a few years ago and a group of people were shown a

load of faces and they were asked to identify the threat threatening faces and they could do it no problem but as the researchers gradually reduce the amount of threatening faces the people were shown something incredible happened they started to identify nonthreatening faces as threatening now just think about that for a minute the researchers called this prevalence induced concept change it's really really interesting idea that in essence we will start to create problems when problemss don't exist and I think that is kind of what happens to a lot of us these days with these comfortable lives

I'm not saying that people don't have tough lives and struggles I'm not saying that but a lot of the struggles are in our head these days they're what we see online what we perceive about the way other people think about us the comparison we have when we look at other people on social media we create all this internal stress and what I found and what I've experienced myself is when I'm regularly doing hard things the other things in my life that seem to be quite big they go away they don't take as much mental space

up as they did you'll hear this a lot from people like people who didn't run and then they start running they say I'm less anxious but I'm not worrying about all the things in my life like I used to because they're actually doing things that really are difficult and you're taking up a lot of that mental bandwidth by doing that difficult thing and I think this is something a lot of people don't realize I've certainly seen this in patience where if they're feeling low and sitting at home and not out there connecting with people and

not out there moving their body and challenging themselves their world starts to contract right they start to worry overly worry they start to ruminate and yes there are other factors that play a role for sure but once you can encourage these patients to get out there start challenging themselves joining a club when they might initially feel a bit nervous they overcome that they feel good about themselves right they feel more resilient and then they get all the benefits of doing that thing with other people their mental health starts to improve so I think this desire

for Comfort while I understand it and while I accept it's who we are as humans I think we all need to take a long hard look at ourselves and go how much discomfort is there in my life how much intentional discomfort and can I change it so what are some of these other discomfort rules can we think about applying into our lives well honestly there are infinite things we can think about introducing right so it's about you figuring out what's going to work for you all I'm trying to do is share some examples that might

inspire you to either take them on or tweak them to make them more suitable for you but here in the UK for example there something called Park Run Park run is a community event most towns and villages in the UK now and many places around the world also have park run where it's a Saturday morning event where people come together and they do 5 kilometers I said do I didn't say run right you complete five kilometers either walking or running or a combination of both and you can get timed and parkr have a motto saying

that no one ever comes last they have a tail Walker who's there at the back so even the slowest person didn't come last it's a wonderful wonderful event I started doing it with my kids a few years ago and it has literally been lifechanging so how does that apply to discomfort rules well it's very simple if you live somewhere where there is a park run every Saturday you can make it a rule that you never miss it rain or shine hot or cold you're going to turn up there because here's the reality once you get

there because of the community energy you will complete those 5 kmers you just will it's the way it works the support the volunteers you just need to get yourself to the start line again why is that a discomfort rule well because the comfortable thing to do is to stay at home right the comfortable thing to do is to stay in bed or make another coffee or have a nice long lazy brunch and again now and again of course there's nothing wrong with doing those things but for me and my kids we have a rule that

we go to park run if we're here and we're not away we go to park r on a Saturday morning and it's powerful because it removes decision making I've realized as being a dad myself right if I leave it up to my kids to decide on a Saturday morning do I feel like going well you know what a lot of the time we don't feel like going it's cold it's raining it's a bit gray but what I want to teach my kids is that you don't be a victim to your brain's desires because if we

are we're going to get sick you have to tell your brain who's in charge right so for some people this is a very very effective rule that helps them complete a 5k every Saturday these discomfort rules are not only about the things that Society conventionally think of as being hard like taking the stairs doing a park run having a cold shower there's other things that count as discomfort rules as well what do many of us do in the evening hey guys I really hope you're finding this useful if you are and you want more content

like it please do check out my book make change that lasts nine simple ways to break free from the habits that are holding you back it's in all the usual places as a paperback ebook and there an audio book which I'm narrating now back to the video we might be watching Netflix and relaxing and again nothing wrong with these things but think about this at 10 p.m. you're on your sofa you're yawning you're tired you know you have to be up tomorrow but you keep watching why a the content's probably really good and stimulating you

but B it's comfortable the easiest thing in the world is just to stay there the harder thing is to put the phone off get up up off the sofa and get yourself to your bedroom it's easier to stay where you are right so you could have a discomfort rule around that an example might be in the week you might want to have a rule that I'm never going to start a new episode after 9:00 p.m. right it's just a onetime rule which means up until then you're enjoying your box set your series whatever it might

be but oh it's 10 9 I'm really tempted I'm not going to watch this that's the uncomfortable thing to do and what are the benefits the benefits are that you're going to get to bed on time you're going to sleep more which is going to make you more resilient you're going to Crave less sugar and caffeine the following day you'll have more energy more Focus your short-term health will be better you long Som how to be better but it all started with a very simple discomfort Rule now look you don't have to follow this advice

these are only suggestions you may go 9:00 p.m. 2o early fine make it 10 p.m. the point I'm really trying to get across is the modern world has convinced us that Comfort is our natural state of being but it's not you know last year I was on the train down to London from the northwest of England where I live and the person I was with was trying to use the app in the train to order a bottle of water from the cafe in a different Carriage you know what the app wasn't working I'm my friend

got so annoyed so annoyed it wasn't working I thought about how mad this is as a situation we're literally on a high-speed train hurtling to one of the great capital cities of the world and because that person has to get up walk for two minutes to a cafe to buy a bottle of water they were getting annoyed right we become so reliant on Comfort we start to get agitated when that comfort's not there the only way around that is to regularly practice discomfort what you practice you get good at if you're practicing being comfortable all

the time you get really good at being comfortable and you get used to and accustomed to being comfortable that's why I want you to think about where you can bring in discomfort into your life another discomfort rule you could think about applying in your life is to wake up and do one five minute action for your heal and why is that a discomfort rule well it's a discomfort rule because you probably don't want to do it you'd probably rather do something else it's much easier to sit in bed pick up your phone and scroll social

media for 20 minutes and then read the news okay but what is that going to do for you how is that going to help you get primed for the day what if you made a commitment to yourself that every morning when I wake up I'm going to do one five minute action for my health it could be whatever you want a workout journaling meditation breath work skipping like anything you like but again it shows your brain who's in charge it shows your brain that you don't have to be a victim to your brain's ancient desires

you can override them and there's incredible power in doing that it teaches you that you have autonomy you are resilient you can trust yourself I have a morning routine that I do each morning I've shared that on multiple occasions on this YouTube channel but I think the power in doing something each morning is that it's uncomfortable you get the uncomfortable win first thing in the morning and that's what makes it so powerful another discomfort rule I've often used myself and with patients is to do with food many people these days are trying to change their

diet okay they're trying to eat more healthily snack Less on the unhealthy foods but it can be a challenge again like of mentioned the brain is wired to eat food when it's around especially sweet delicious high calorie foods so a rule you could put into your life to try and counter r that is this one I'm never going to eat after 700 p.m. it's a simple rule that can be effective for some people because what kind of food decisions do we tend to make after 700 p.m. or late into the evening for many of us

they tend to be the decisions that we wish we hadn't made right maybe we start off the day really well with a healthy breakfast and we're good in the day but sometimes we've had a stressful day we're feeling tired our ability to resist temptation is down at the end of the day and people often go to sugar to biscuits to ice cream okay now I get that I don't want you to beat yourself up if that's you all I'm saying is that you could apply a one-time rule I'm not going to eat after 7:00 p.m.

or 8:00 p.m. or whatever it is that's going to work for you to try and reduce that it's a rule for discomfort that's going to make you healthier of course that doesn't mean on occasion you might be out with your friends and have a dessert late when I say a rule like I said about the stairs I don't take the stairs 100% of the time but it's about 90 to 95% of the time all of the rules I've suggested I don't want you to necessarily take them verbatim and actually use them unless you want to

just use the ideas use the principles go okay where can I introduce discomfort in a way that appeals to me and in a way that I think I can stick to so have a think about what I've said right have a think about what I said about all these diseases of comfort it's a different way to look at ill health isn't it but I think it's a very helpful way and I've made some suggestions right you don't to do them all pick one or pick two pick the ones that appeal to you or tweak them

to make them more suitable to you in your life let me know in the comments which ones you're planning on doing and what you think of them I genuinely would love to know and whatever you plan on introducing into your life always remember pay attention how is it making you feel what improvements are you noticing because when you start to really get in tune with that it gives you the motivation to keep going when you're not sleeping well every aspect of your life gets worse moods relationships Focus concentration how much we eat and in the

long term sleep deprivation increases your risk of early death and increases the chance of pretty much every chronic disease that we've studied so far I've been a doctor for over two decades now I've seen tens of thousands of patients but what I have seen time and time again is that people are engaging with behaviors that that they don't realize are sabotaging the quality of their sleep when I can help them improve their Sleep Quality immediately they feel a change in their energy and their vitality and so in this video I want to share with you

some of the common things I have seen my patients do in the evening that without them realizing has negatively impacted the quality of their sleep the first thing I want to talk about is what I call liquid stress so what's Liquid stress well in that category I put caffeine containing drinks and alcohol now I understand that many people consume these beverages they enjoy these beverages but I think it's really important to understand the potential impacts that they might be having on your sleep so let's start with caffeine now we all metabolize caffeine slightly differently which

basically means we've all got a different tolerance to how much caffeine we can manage however in my experience many people are consuming far too much for their own needs and it's having a negative impact on their sleep and here's the problem if you drink too much caffeine at the wrong times it negatively impacts your sleep which means the following day you wake up feeling tired and you need more and more caffeine to get you through and so it becomes a really vicious cycle that can be really hard for people to break out of especially if

they have to function during the day now when we think about compounds in the body and how quickly they are broken down and then eliminated we often talk about something called the compound's halflife well the half life of caffeine is roughly 6 hours now I do appreciate we're all slightly different and that exact amount will depend on your genetic but let's just imagine that for all of us it is 6 hours well what that means is if at noon so midday you leave your office and you order a large coffee at your local coffee shop

it means that at 6:00 p.m. 6 hours later half of the caffeine in that drink is still going around your body and your brain and it means at midnight a quarter of the caffeine that you consumed at 12:00 is going around your body and your brain now for many of us who know that we're sensitive to caffeine we wouldn't dream of having A4 cup of coffee in the evening before we go to bed or a half cup of coffee at 6:00 p.m. so with that knowledge you're now empowered to think wow could that be an

issue for me you see many people will say well look I've been fine I've been having a 3:30 p.m. cup of tea or cup of coffee my entire working life why would it suddenly be affecting me now and this is something I've seen many many times people were able to tolerate a certain dose of caffeine for a period of time but then at some point they no longer can and I think that's a number of potential reasons for this you may have heard me talk about stress in the past and I talk about stress thresholds

this idea that we can accumulate a certain amount of stress but when we get to that threshold that's when things start to go wrong and I often think about caffeine in relation to thresholds as well I have seen before that when patients are let's say under low levels of stress life is pretty calm there's not much going on in their personal life things are generally feeling calm and in control they can often tolerate a bit of caffeine maybe late afternoon at 400 p.m. let's say but when the stress load in their life starts to increase

and go up it's almost as if they don't have the capacity anymore to deal with that caffeine I've seen this enough times to know that this is a real thing so the reason I'm bringing this up is if you're someone who's struggling with your sleep and you have told yourself a story that caffeine is not not at play here because in the past you were absolutely fine with caffine in the afternoon I just want to sort of invite you to consider that perhaps things have changed and the only way you would really know is by

cutting it out right so if that is you what I'd recommend is that for at least 7 days you consume any caffeine you're going to have in the morning so before noon and just pay attention to what happens and then if you're not sure what you could do is go coold turkey and cut it all out for a week or two and see what happens now if you are going to go call Turkey you may well get withdrawal symptoms people can feel Moody really tired headaches their emotions can be quite turbulent it can cause relationship

issues so you've got to be careful before you adopt an approach like this so for most people and in the past when I reduced my own caffeine consumption I have done it very very gradually because if I was to stop abruptly you can get a lot of symptoms so the point I'm trying to make is that caffeine is a psychoactive stimulant it's the most consumed psychoactive stimulant on the planet and if you look around any Urban environment now any airport any shopping mall any Town Center any Village what do you see a surplus of coffee

shops now don't get me wrong I love sitting in a coffee shop with a nice long black doing a bit of work I enjoy the vibe the atmosphere but I think if we take a step back we have to ask ourselves what has gone on in society whereby we have this many coffee shops you know what's going on you know what's your relationship like with caffeine can you function without it do you agree that much of society is overly reliant on caffeine what's really interesting is that many people who consume caffeine regularly will tell you

that they need caffeine to function well it helps them think better helps them be more cognitively sharp and yes there is some data supporting this but and it's a very big but there was a University of Bristol study from 2010 which really seem to conclude that caffeine only helps our cognitive performance if we are a habituated caffeine Drinker basically if you're used to having caffeine regularly then the reason you feel a boost in the morning is because your you're suffering from withdrawal symptoms and all that caffine is doing is getting you back to the sort

of level where non-caffeinated drinkers exist all the time now I don't think it's cut and dried I think there is some evidence of support that a bit of caffeine can improve our cognitive performance in certain situations and athletic performance having said that but what I want to do is help Empower people right I want to help you under understand the impact that caffeine might be having on the quality of your sleep now if you cut it out for a week or reduce it to just being in the morning for a week and you find that

you're sleeping better and that your energy goes up and you have more vitality and more focus and your relationships are better then you're empowered with that information you can then choose what you want to do you may go wow I quite like feeding like like this or you might go actually although I'm feeling better I really miss those extra cups of coffee that I was having and on balance for me I'd rather have them only you can make that decision I just want to help you understand the impact that it might be having on you

and as I say in my experience I've seen so many patients who told me that caffeine wasn't having an impact on their sleep Health but when they cut back on it reduce it to just being in the morning all quit all together they soon realized just what it was doing now the scientific research on caffeine and its impact on our sleep is pretty clear it shows us that caffeine can prolong sleep latency which is the time it takes to fall asleep it can reduce Total Sleep time it can reduce sleep efficiency and worsen perceived Sleep

Quality but again it's important for me to remind you that this is a dose dependent effect many people are absolutely fine with a small dose of caffeine at some point in the morning so I'm not trying to say you should give it up I'm asking you to pay attention as to what impact it might be having on your sleep now what about those people who say I'm absolutely fine I can knock back a double espresso after dinner at 9:30 p.m. and I fall asleep completely fine well look it's impossible for me to comment on every

single situation but the scientific research that I read that does look at this is seeming to suggest that even if you can fall asleep after drinking let's say a double espresso in the evening that the quality of your sleep may not be as good had you not done that and again I think some of the best ways to assess this for ourselves is to ask ourselves you know when we wake up in the morning how do we feel what what is our energy like what are our relationships like is anyone around me flagging that I'm

being a bit Moody of course all these things can have other reasons behind them but if we're trying to assess our sleep generally speaking it's not really the number of hours that we need to be overly worried about yes on balance most people seem to need between seven and N hours but some people seem to do okay on 6 and 1 half hours right some people need a bit more and again you can ask yourself these questions in the morning you know have I woken up feeling refreshed can I wake up at roughly the same

time without needing an alarm all of these things help to give you an idea of the quality of your sleep so when we're thinking about caffeine it's not just coffee and black tea you need to be thinking about green tea does contain caffeine even decaffinated coffee has small amounts of caffeine within it dark chocolate can have caffeine within it I know for me personally I'm quite sensitive to caffeine I will consume caffeine but only in the morning if I have dark chocolate in the afternoon I can often feel it in bed at night so just

be aware that caffeine is hiding in all different kinds of places and if you are trying to improve your sleep then trying to be more mindful of your intake is usually a really good idea now the other form of liquid stress I often think about when it comes to sleep is alcohol sorry to interrupt if you're enjoying this video and want to dive deeper into the topic of nutrition I have created a free special guide which contains the five most important changes I think we all need to make when it comes to our diet if

you want to get a hold of this free guide all you have to do is click on the link in the description box below many people use alcohol as a way of winding down in the evening and many people will tell you that it helps them fall asleep now whilst it's impossible to say what's going on in every individual situation as a general rule we have to stop thinking of alcohol as a sleep aid alcohol is really a sedative and sedation is not the same thing as sleep it's easy to mistake it for sleep but

if you were to observe both States in a sleep lab you would see a completely different picture with your brain waves sedation is where your brain cells have switched off sleep is where hundreds of thousands of brain cells coordinate in their firing it's a very different process so in my experience as a doctor many people who are struggling with their sleep are doing so because of their alcohol consumption now can we say that any amount of alcohol is going to affect someone's sleep I don't think we can say that a little bit like caffeine there

are genetic Tendencies at play here I also think just like caffeine that the amount of stress in your life also impacts how quickly and easily you can metabolize alcohol and back in the days when I did used to drink alcohol I would often find that a glass of red wine in the middle of a work week when there was a lot of stress going on and I was quite tired would have quite a negative impact but that same glass of red wine if I was on holiday somewhere switched off from work with my family would

have very little impact so I think it's impossible to look at these things in isolation the rest of your life the context seems to matter quite a lot but if we look directly at what the scientific research shows us about what alcohol does for our sleep most of the research points to alcohol affecting our sleep in the following ways firstly it fragments your sleep so basically when you've consumed it you may well feel as though you've slept fine but you wake up feeling exhausted and often this is because you woke up on multiple occasions through

the night it was a much lighter sleep than usual and because you're often not aware of those increased Awakenings you often don't draw the association and you think it had nothing to do with that alcohol but it was the alcohol causing the Sleep fragmentation which is why you feel so tired the following day alcohol also has a negative impact on a type of sleep that we call REM sleep rapid eye movement sleep also known as deep sleep and that's a particularly important part of your sleep cycle many sleep researchers call it emotional first aid because

it's the part of the Sleep Cycle where we actually process difficult experiences that happen during the day so that's really really important and if we look around at society and see how many people these days are struggling with their mood with depression with feeling anxious well there stands the reason that alcohol consumption reducing REM sleep which as I've just mentioned is emotional first aid could that be contributing absolutely on a wider note we know that when people are sleep deprived their outlook on the world is more negative the tired brain remembers more negative experiences than

the well-rested brain so improving Your Sleep Quality is one of the quickest ways that you can actually change your experience of the world now look many people will say to me yeah doc I understand this but I really enjoy a glass of wine in the evening just before I go to bed it relaxes me it's a time for myself it's a little reward now I understand all of those things I understand there can be some powerful associations with certain things like alcohol and again I'm not trying to say that you need to give up what

I'm trying to say is that I know that for many people consuming alcohol in the evening is negatively impacting their sleep and that poor sleep is negatively impacting the quality of their life so I'm just trying to help you understand understand that you might want to reexamine your relationship with alcohol and if you do insist on consuming it in the evening if you say no that's a part of my life then I would urge you to consider could you bring it forward in the evening for example if you were to have a glass of red

wine at 5:00 p.m. as opposed to 10 p.m. the truth is that the 5:00 p.m glass of red wine is going to have less of an impact on your sleep than the 10 p.m. one because by the time you go to bed some of it will have been processed and metabolized having said that we've got to be careful if we start drinking at 5:00 p.m. it could lead to even more drinks it could lead to increased snacking etc etc there are always knock on effects but the real take-home point is that if you are going

to have it in the evening the earlier the better when it comes to your sleep so there's many reasons to have a little think about about how much alcohol you're consuming and when and just zooming out here on this whole topic of liquid stress I get it many people enjoy caffeine containing drinks many people enjoy alcohol containing drinks I really don't want to be here telling you what to do with your life you're absolutely able to choose what is right for you but what I have seen time and time again is that people just don't

realize the impact that these drinks are having on their sleep and My Hope Is by helping you understand that you may be able to reset your relationship and consume them if you choose to in a way that's helping you and not harming you loneliness is a topic you are incredibly passionate about I've heard you say before that the impact of loneliness is greater than the impact of obesity so I wonder if right at the top of this conversation you could spell out just how damaging is loneliness and why does it affect our physical health so

much this is not something I learned about in medical school for sure and it's um surprising to many but the the health impact of loneliness and isolation is really profound and it's teaches us that loneliness is so much more than a bad feeling but when people are struggling with being disconnected from each other it actually is associated with an increased risk in depression anxiety and suicide so real impacts on Mental Health the impact on our physical health is also profound even though perhaps even more surprising which is that there's an increase in risk for stroke

and heart disease and dementia as well as premature death and with premature death like this increase in mortality that we see associated with being lonely and isolated is on par with the impact of smoking and it's even greater than what we see with obesity and I mentioned that because we we we are trained in understand that smoking and obesity these are classic public health issues but it turns out that addressing loneliness and isolation is just as important because the impact on our well-being is just as profound for someone who's listening for who has never heard

about the impacts of loneliness before I think they may intuitively understand sure it can affect your mental well-being who wants to feel isolated who wants to feel as though they don't have someone around them to open up to to share things in their life with but I don't think people know or intuitively understand I should say the impact on our physical health yeah when you say that loneliness is as harmful as smoking I think for some people they'll go well how does that work you know what's going on there surely smoking 15 cigarettes a day

is more harmful than being lonely but of course the data says that that's not the case yeah and it's a legitimate question and in fact I too wondered the same thing how is it that loneliness actually impacts your health in this way your physical health in particular and so I had to study this more deeply understand it you know as I as I delved into this subject there's a lot more to understand here by the way and that's one of the reasons more research is needed we see the effects very clearly how those effects come

about like what biological processes are taking place in the body is where the understanding has to strengthen but there's some theories as to how this happens one is is uh and then the one I I'll mention is particularly focused around inflammation in our body uh it turns out that when we are lonely and isolated from one another that actually puts our bodies in a stress State now a stress state in the short term can be good right if you get stress before an exam or before you make a big presentation at work sometimes that can

rev you up and focus you and you can perform better but when stress is chronic when it's prolonged in our lives that's when it can start to do damage right and that's when we see that that stress can actually lead to ill effects on our mental and physical health and particularly with stress what we see is that it can be associated with increased levels of inflammation in our body which can over time damage tissues and blood vessels increase our risk of cardiovascular disease and other illnesses so stress and inflammation may be an explanation in part

for why loneliness especially chronic loneliness lead to the health impacts and lastly just consider this also Al as a as a as a parallel like we're all familiar with the concept of like lifting a heavy object whether it's at the gym or in your house when you're moving things and you know if you go to the gym and you lift you know a weight and you curl it a few times and you put it down over time that become you can get stronger and stronger but what if you pick up a really heavy weight you

curl and contract your muscle and then you hold it like that for 3 hours like imagine the damage that that would do like to your muscle that's the equivalent of what happens with short-term stress versus longterm stress short-term stress potentially can help you get stronger but when your distress is chronic when it's prolonged it can start to damage you and that's essentially what chronic loneliness does when I explain the impacts of loneliness to my patients I always do it through the lens of the stress response because it kind of makes so much sense that you

know a million years ago or 200,000 years ago in our hunter gather of tribes if we were by ourself and we didn't have our tribe around us well our very clever body would be preparing us they know that we're vulnerable if we were to get attacked right you know the body prepares us for that so increases inflammation MH increases how quickly our blood will clot MH because of course if we get attacked by a wild Predator instead of bleeding to death the blood's going to clot and it's going to mhm save our life and I

really like that way of thinking about it because I've certainly found that patients get it when you explain it like that they yeah of course it kind of makes sense and it's interesting I've heard you say before that loneliness has always existed in humanity but today it has a different flavor yeah what do you mean by that well I think the Human Experience is to be lonely from time to time just like the human experiences to be hungry or thirsty from time to time loneliness ultimately is a signal our body is sending us when we

lack something we need for survival if we respond to that by filling that need with food or drink in the case of hunger or thirst or in this case with human connection the case of loneliness and it goes away so it's been part of the human experience we recognize it the problem and the interesting flavor of loneliness today is is is sort of the following like number one we're that young people are actually struggling with greater levels of loneliness than older people right and this is a bit counterintuitive because people typically think well when you're

younger you're at school you're around other you know other kids when you're at University you're surrounded by other students as well you've got a family around you like why would you be lonely right but in the US for example we are finding that the rates of loneliness among young people are double that among those who are 65 and older and this type of data showing a skew toward those who are younger is popping up in other countries as well the other thing that's different about the flavor of loneliness today compared to let's say 40 50

years ago is that fundamental changes in shifts in technology have just fundamentally altered how we interact with one another such that we can be around lots of other people but be completely disconnected from them I think about for example this the recent University tour that we did in the United States and where we spent a lot of time talking to students about their experiences of loneliness and I will say just parenthetically that these events by the way of all the events I've done you know as a public official over a number of years were the

ones that seem to generate the most engagement and demand because young people are feeling and experiencing loneliness so intensely but what they often talked about was the fact that they had lots of people around them on college campuses on University campuses but they said the culture changed such that it's not easy to just go up and talk to someone anymore people have their earbuds in they're looking at their phones they're on their laptops in the dining hall they see it's just the culture just isn't anymore or isn't easy to make it easy to actually go

up and talk to one another that is fundamentally different from how we have existed for most of humanity um like we didn't exist for for years in a situation where we were all together yet weren't talking to one another or engaged with one another so this is led to a circumstance where millions of people around the world are surrounded by others yet feeling disconnected from them feeling like people don't know them feeling like they're alone and that means that we've got to do something different you know than just trying to throw people together in a

room and hope that they feel better because as this has gone on over time young people in particular are telling us that not only are they on technology and with people online more than they are in person but they're also saying that their comfort within person interaction has diminished and the pandemic played a role in this as well for young people who went through the isolation in particular of 2020 at a very sensitive time in their development in their social and psychological development and many of them tell us today that that they feel the pandemic

made them age backward that it made it harder for them to actually interact with other socially and they're still trying to catch up to that so that's all the flavor of loneliness that I I look at and see today and I particularly worry about it when it comes to young [Music] people that was a book I think it was published in around 2015 2016 called reclaiming conversation by Sher turl from MIT I'm not sure if you're familiar with it yes I am I I I found that book such a fascinating read and I remember clearly

that she made the case in that book that youngsters for want of a better term the the children the teenagers growing up today many of them as you just mentioned prefer to communicate electronically for a number of reasons but one of the points she made was that from the interviews she conducted people were saying yeah I prefer it because it's more predictable I can take my time I can edit I can make sure that I have crafted the perfect text message to send uhhuh whereas of course in real life interaction like we're doing now we

have to respond in time we may get something wrong we may jumble our words or whatever we we can't edit before we speak M and it really made an impact on me that because I thought wow we're fundamentally changing how people are communicating we are editing first before we connect instead of connecting first I'm not saying edit second I don't think we should be editing we should be having those real life interactions but it is becoming more of a problem isn't it it is and and we us just share that example it's it's very it's

really timely and and in my head poignant because there are two primary challenges that are introduced by that situation one is an authenticity Gap and the other is a skill Gap so if I one of the things that's powerful about being in person is it's it's easier to sort of you know for for people to understand who you are and where you're coming from because there there they're hearing what you're saying unedited they're also looking at your facial expressions your body language your tone like all of these things contribute to how we connect with and

understand each other yeah when I just see the text that you've um sent when I that's also I know that that's curated edited sanitized whatever it might be my question is who what am I what's he really thinking who am I really talking to do I really get where he's coming from get who he is and all that is harder online so it's easier to be authentic in some ways have an authentic connection when you're in person which is why I always say that five minutes of inperson time with someone is so much better sometimes

than half an hour of texting back and forth with somebody because you can just understand somebody more deeply but the other part in add authenticity is the skills part so the truth is like in real life we need to know how to interact with other people whether that's doing a job interview uh in person whether that's interacting with a customer with a neighbor whether that's asking somebody out on a date you know if you're younger or figuring out how to negotiate conflict in a relationship these are all things we have to do in person and

question is where do we build the skills to do that and if you growing up in an environment where you don't have those opportunities because most of the interaction is online then what happens is you start to go down a downward spiral where you become less and less comfortable with inperson interaction so you avoid it yeah and then you you tilt more toward online interactions which makes you even less comfortable in person and and down and down the Spiral goes and then what you do is then you send kids off to University where they have

to interact with people in person and they and it's it's a very difficult experience for them and and you I don't blame uh students in University because if you've grown up for the last number of years um without that skill set uh because most of your interactions have been on you know online then you're going to be it's going to be harder for you so some way we need to help young people build those skills build that muscle for inperson interaction it's ultimately more fulfilling but they doesn't mean it's always easy just in the same

way that the first time you go to the gym if you've never worked out like it's uncomfortable initially to lift weights to be on a treadmill to like run you're going to feel tired uh it might be a little bit painful but then you build strength and ultimately you're in a much better place yeah it's fascinating as you were talking then I was taken back to my childhood mhm and a couple of things came up for me one is you know when we were kids mobile phones did not exist so most families most households would

have a landline phone certainly in the UK yeah and I remember as a teenager if I wanted to get hold of one of my friends from school to arrange something I had to phone the landline MH talk to to my friend's parents and ask you know interact with an adult basically before you could get hold of your friends yes and we took that sort of stuff for granted but the generation today because of mobile phones they're bypassing having to talk to an adult yeah I'm not saying you know there aren't benefits to that but you

do miss out on developing that skill of talking to this adult who you may not know very well you have to you know exchange pleasantries with them they may ask you questions which you know you then have to answer so that's the first thing which I thought was interesting the second thing it's funny recently um I I had a meeting with my team an inperson meeting to to do with this podcast and I was reflecting with my wife afterwards and saying you know what I just assume everyone finds it easy to be in groups and

interact but I shouldn't make that assumption because not everyone does and some people get intimidated in large groups and they don't know what to say and I feel I've always found it really easy I don't know if that is an innate skill I don't think it is I think it was something that my mother drilled into me so I can remember at the age of 12 IC on our street Five Doors Down a new family arrived I remember my mom said to me okay this afternoon I want you to go knock on the door introduce

yourself cuz they've got a boy who looks like is your age uh I'm like what just go round mom's like yeah I want to go and knock on the door introduce your to his parents and say you know if he doesn't have any friends he wants to play with it you're just down the road huh I didn't like it I I I can't say I was excited about doing that but that's the kind of stuff my mom would kind of make me do uhhuh and it's funny I think that's totally relevant to you're talking about

because as a kid Society through landlines and and other things made me interact with other people like all kids had to but also I think on a family level my parents my mother in particular would probably recognize that this is an important skill and make me go into my uh zone of discomfort practice as you say it's a skill and get better at it so now as an adult I find really really easy uh-huh I love that your mother did that I mean that it's a powerful thing and what I love that your mother did

not do if she didn't say well because this is a little challenging or uncomfortable for rangan he doesn't need to do it but she said I'll support you through it but it's important to do yeah and then you built a skill as a result and I think in the same way that parents might encourage their child to take music lessons you know and to learn to play the piano or the violin or might encourage them to join a basketball team even though they're not great initially and then they build skill I think we have to

actually look at social interaction in the same way and perhaps 40 50 years ago we didn't have to do that but we're living in a different time right now where the default is not anymore that young people just develop and build all of these in-person social skills because the environment has changed the technology technology environment in particular uh like when I was growing up I remember that my my parents I was really shy and introverted as a kid and so it was actually hard for me to like go and just make friends and stuff but

I remember my parents would recognize that and they did something very similar to what your mom did is they made me they knew which neighbors had kids right and so they made me go to the neighbor's house knock on the door and ask the uh parents if the kid was free to play right and I hated doing this initially I was like oh God I don't want to do that because and the big worry the reason didn't want to do it is I was scared what would happen if they said no yeah of course like

I don't want to feel rejected like that as a kid and I still remember the neighbor across from us ultimately said no he's like no I'm too busy I got homework right and I feel was like crushed right I was like this is like why did I do this I feel so embarrass knew I should have gone yeah I knew I shouldn't have gone but then like but they would keep doing things like that like when we had we had a tragedy in our school where uh couple kids were driving to together at lunch and

got into a car accident and tragically one of them died and the the kid who made it who thankfully was survived was somebody that we we we had known I wouldn't say he was the closest of friends but he was a friend um and remember my parents said to me call him go over and visit him and make sure he's okay and I was like I don't know if he like wants me to come over what am I supposed to do like I don't know I was like you know in school in grade school at

the time but they literally drove me to his house dropped me off there I knocked on the door and I still remember to this day like we ended up spending like 2 hours together just like walk we didn't talk anything about what happened you know about the just tragic car accident how are you doing we just talked about other stuff what was going on in his family you know you know about what was happening with basketball this that whatever but at the end like when I left he said hey uh thank you for for coming

over that actually meant meant a lot to me and I was like oh my gosh like I I didn't realize you know that you could have that kind of impact from both people like I felt that great too but but it was a reminder to me that that what my parents were encouraging me to do was to take social risk and we all need to be able to take a little bit of risk socially in order to forge meaningful connections right if we don't if we can't tell somebody that hey I like you I'm interested

in you would love to take you out for lunch or just spend time together take a walk we may never find a relationship that's ful filling to us right if we don't feel comfortable you know having a conversation with somebody who's sitting in the cafeteria or is in our class we may never develop the friendships that ultimately like change our life um and same at work like if we're not able to talk to work colleagues we may not develop good relationships at work and I I just think that this is a muscle that we have

to build and as parents we got to help our kids build it doesn't mean that we can't do it compassionately and with support but I do think it means that we have to be able to tolerate some discomfort or at least set the expectation for our kids that you know this may not be easy like in the beginning the first time you go up and talk to somebody or ask them a question um I last maybe just shared know personal for my own kids like okay when my kids were went through the first year of

the pandemic they were really young um and it was a a t like my son was four my daughter was two at the time and that was a really important time Social Development for them and before the pandemic they were both like kind of pretty social kids you know like with strangers no no problem whatever whatever after the pandemic after that you know year or so of just like largely not being you know around that many people outside media family they became incredibly shy MH and we have spent the last few years uh trying to

figure out my wife and I how do we get them to be comfortable with social interaction again and we got a lot of advice from like friends from teachers from anybody who would give us advice you know trying to figure out how to cuz we knew that in home they were perfectly like social and and everything but with with teachers with other adults even with sometimes with other kids it was much harder for them so we would do these things uh with them where we would um we go we would go to a part of

town where you know like it was a safe part of town like pretty friendly and there were a lot of tables there where people would just sit and eat at you know at tables from restaurants close by and we would actually Challenge and we gave them like a piece of paper where they had like um they like three simple questions that they and and they would take that paper up to a table and they would ask the adults the questions that were on those papers and they were like very very simple you know might be

like um I don't know what's your favorite color you know or what's your favorite flower you know things simple things like this but it was a challenge for them we were challenging them to then interact in on a simple matter you know with someone they didn't know and we were there you about 10 ft behind them so they knew that like you know worst comes to worse I can always run back to mom or dad but it actually sort of push them to get a little bit more comfortable with interaction so I do think that

this is a vital muscle that we have to build more intentionally than perhaps we've ever had to uh you know in recent history and it's because fundamentally our social environment has changed and we've got to help young people through that yeah I think that's a really interesting way to look at it in the past the culture the world around us probably meant that our innate ability to connect with other humans that's what makes us who we are yeah would naturally be fostered and nurtured just because of the way we used to live you had to

do it you couldn't sit at home on your smartphone and audio grocery shopping and whatever film you want to watch you know you you can do everything by yourself now you know I was explaining to my son last week I said you know in the '90s if we wanted to watch something yeah and it just come out well it would be in the cinema first a few months later it would be out on a video tape and you know I had people on a Friday and Saturday night used to go to like Blockbuster video store

and actually wait and queue and there was only like five videos and you you'd have to bring it back and Rewind it and it just it's incredible to think how how quickly things have moved on from that yeah and that may seem like just such a small thing of course it's nice to be able to stream any movie you want at any time but it comes at a cost yeah comes at a cost where you no longer have to interact you don't even have to talk to the the guy behind the the till at Blockbuster

and you know speak to them and wait for them to go and find the video all those little things I think we I don't know we we've just taken it for granted you see it everywhere now and I think yes we can look at the lockdowns in 2020 and Beyond in different countries and the impact that has had but this was going on before then absolutely was you may have been accelerated it was going on before then so I guess the natural progression for me and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this is in

the past the norm was we were able to connect yeah now it's not so now we need to teach people proactively probably in schools we need to teach kids these skills parents maybe need to be taught by leaders and society that hey it's a really good idea to help your kids lean into their social discomfort because that's how they're going to grow I think that's exactly what we have to do both as parents and actually in our schools is just recognize we have to proactively build the social muscle for our kids because I do think

that the default mode has shifted yeah exact from social to solitary right that's the default mode now it is I can be in my home and get all my packages delivered see whatever content I want on my computer screen check on on what's happening in my friends lives on social media I can do all of that alone like in my house uh I don't even have to go out and get groceries or food so if that default mode is shifted that means we got to be proactive there's a parallel here to physical activity too right

like 500 you know well maybe more than that 500,000 years ago people didn't have to think that much about whether they were getting F enough steps like in their day or how physically active they were like as a part of your day-to-day life you were moving around a lot you had to but now because we have developed more sedentary Lifestyles because sedentary is Now the default we have have to be proactive about building physical activity into our day and I think we're seeing a similar phenomena when it comes to social health that to to you

know because we've defaulted to solitary we've got to proactively build in Social skill and I think it's not just skill but social activity for adults as well like for many of us it's not always easy to just get up the wherewithal to like go out and hang out with your friends you know or to make plans you know to to have lunch you know with an old colleague or to go see family but but that's something we've got to to proactively do because it just doesn't happen uh by default and uh I mean I look

I I find even my own life I've got to be more proactive than than I was before otherwise I as an introvert I can find myself sometimes easily sliding into a phase where I could go days you know without really seeing anyone outside of my my wife and my kids and my wife will sometimes remind me she'll be like hey you know we we got to get out and like see people and so I'm trying to be much more proactive about that if you found that content useful I think you really going to enjoy this

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