The CHANGE Doctor: 9 Ways to Break The Habits That Hold You Back | Dr. Rangan Chatterjee x Rich Roll

[Music] everyone wants change that lasts Beyond a few weeks and a few months I've seen patients in the darkest places which change their lives why does it have to be hard I believe it's only hard because we haven't got to the route but inspiration without action will not lead to change you have to do something on the back of it I suspect many of us are considering changes it's that time of year and specifically within that how to create lasting change but what if success requires we completely evolve our entire approach to change all together

well my guest for this exploration is my friend and repeat friend of the Pod Dr rangan chattery one of the most trusted and influential medical doctors in the United Kingdom rongan is the host of Europe's most listened to health podcast feel better live more which is a show that we hear at voicing change media are very proud to be supporting and he's also a friend who is I would say very thoughtfully revolutionizing how we think about health how we think about wellness and personal transformation if you say you're going to do something and you do

it each day you build momentum you build trust in yourself you show yourself with real world evidence every single day that you can do it today we explore the topic of behavior change and we're going to do it through what rongan calls minimal Reliance which is this really clever and unique and pretty fascinating framework that's at the heart of his new book make change that last which essentially decodes the invisible dependencies that don't serve us that impede growth and ultimately interfere with creating lasting transformation if your whole life is spent outside of yourself getting inputs

from the outside you're not tuning into what's going on inside the most powerful step you will ever take for any kind of behavior change is [Music] today's episode is brought to you by the awesome organizations that make this show [Music] possible welcome to La uh it's great to be back with you you're having a full court press La experience from what I understand you're really like doing it aren't you I am it's it's been great I haven't been to La since pre-co I'm loving it I like the community here like the things I'm interest in

wellness and health it kind of feels normal out here certainly the people I've met so far and it's it's kind of made me think that this is not real life like out here it's so normal to be thinking about health and wellness and it really struck me over the last 10 days that like if you grow up around these people who are really interested in health and well-being and you know I've passed more sauner and coal plun places over the past 10 days than I've ever seen before but you're kind of in a self- selected

you know kind of community though because you have contacts and friends and people and you're kind of visiting all of them so you're hitting all the sort of hotspots I mean La is a very big place there's I don't know 20 million people here so there's all different kinds to your point yeah like wellness well-being these kind of principles that you speak about on your show and that you write about are yes like I think more embedded into the DNA of the culture here and I think because I don't live here and I live in

the northwest of England it is it's a stark contrast to what I'm surrounded by and I find that really really interesting how much our environment influences how we think and what we deem to be important mhm so I've really been quite struck by that I also feel very La at the moment because I've got to know Gabby and Lead over the last week and I've heard about their workouts their pool stuff for years and they're just two of the nicest people I've come across they're so warm and friendly and I've just hung out and I've

been at their place and I'm sort of pinching myself a little bit going this is not my real life like I'm in these this is your real life though rongan this is the life that you created well it feels real at the moment but I'll be very soon I'll be back in the northwest of England with it's dark you know the kids I spoke to before it's like it's dark at 4 p.m. MH so anyway but I'm having a great time it's great to be here well it's great to see you is this your fourth

or fifth appearance on the show you've been on a number of times I can't remember how many times I think it maybe the fourth one but the last time was preco when we were still recording in my house so you have never even been to this studio no and I love it you done a great job well it's great to be back with you um we had a nice lunch the other day with some members of the community and got to reconnect we went to that Spotify event together the other day which was really cool

and now we're here we're doing the thing it is that time of year when it does get dark at 4:00 in the northern hemisphere we're sort of careening towards the holiday season uh when this comes out I think at the very end of the year it coincides with your new book coming out which is what we're going to talk about but it is that moment where we're all thinking about um what we want this next year to look like what are the changes we're thinking about making how are we going to go about making them

and how are we going to do it in a way that works within you know the complexities of our busy lives and and so I think the spirit in which I want to kind of hold this space for this conversation is around habit change which is you know obviously at the Crux of of your new book and how you think about this time of year and setting people up to make those changes uh and sustain them everyone wants change right everyone wants change that lasts Beyond a few weeks and a few months and You Know

Rich I've been a doctor now medical doctor for 23 years okay I've seen tens of thousands of patients during that time and for many years it's been very clear to me from my own experience and from the scientific research that 80 to 90% of what we we see as daughters is in some way related to our Collective modern Lifestyles now I say that with an open heart I'm genuinely not blaming anyone I'm simply saying that the way we live our modern lives is resulting in many of us feeling sick and getting symptoms and getting diseases

and as I probably mentioned on previous episodes on your show you know we don't really get taught properly at Medical School I would say how to tackle that we get taught how to tackle certain things very very well but we don't really understand how to create health and how to use our lifestyle to not only prevent ill health in the future but also to help treat people when they're already sick that's a missing piece of me that's always been there people say yeah lifesty is really important for prevention yes it is but you can also

treat people who are sick often by making small changes to their lifestyle so about 10 years ago I thought well it's really clear to me if it's lifestyle that is driving our ill health what are the key factors that we can look at and back in my first book I shared this idea that there are four pillars to health and well-being food movement sleep and relaxation and I would say that each one of these are really really important each one is going to have an impact but you can't just do one you have to look

at all four and get Balan between all four of them so you don't need perfection in any one of those four pillars but you do need to address all of them and get that balance I still stand by that that our lifestyle is the cause of most not all most of what we see as dotters but I don't think those four pillars are they are a root cause but they're not the highest root cause because if you go even higher Upstream I think think a lot of those habits and behaviors that we do are as

a consequence of how we interact with the world mhm right so to make it super super specific for people and maybe really bring it to life I would imagine that anyone listening right now if there are fans of your show they generally are interested in improving their lives okay in a variety of different ways yes their diets their movement their sleep but also their mindsets so let's take something like sugar for example example most people who are consuming too much sugar for their health I would argue in this day and age they know that right

they know that excess sugar is causing them a problem so we think that if anyone wants to make sustainable change we think they need more knowledge mhm and I used to think people need more knowledge and it's true that some people do need more information and more external knowledge but I would argue that many of us don't need more external knowledge we need more internal knowledge and self-awareness oh why despite knowing that sugar is really excess sugar is problematic for me why despite having done a one-month detox last January where I felt great and my

energy was up and my skin was better and my sleep was better you've got the knowledge you've got the Practical experience of knowing that knowledge is going to make you feel better yet people often revert back so as a doctor I've been fascinated why I thought it was just knowledge a few years ago now you give people the knowledge they start taking action they start to feel better I thought okay we've cracked it now give them the knowledge they feel better great but people would revert back and so this book which is my sixth one

is really my effort to go further upstream and go unless you address the root causes the way you think the way you approach the world the way you approach adversity right you're going to struggle to make these changes that last in the long term and I believe everyone can make changes that last in the long term I feel I can do that in my life I feel one of the problems with behavior change which is that we're trying to overcome the person who we are the change we're trying to make is in conflict with who

we think that we are so you mentioned new year I think it's the energy behind the behavior that's the most important thing not the behavior here so if your New Year's resolution comes from an energy of lack that I'm not enough okay I'm not good enough and you're trying to overcome that with guilt and shame and willpower yeah you can be fine for two weeks or one month or two months or 3 months but you will always revert back that's been my experience but if it comes from an energy of love and abundance that hey

I actually like who I am right actually change becomes a lot easier and you can get to a point where change becomes effortless I experienced that myself now having having tried to make changes for years that were in conflict with how I saw myself to be you can get to that place but I don't believe that most of the advice is getting to the true root cause mhm does that make sense yeah it does I mean essentially what you're saying is is some version of we are Our Own Worst Enemy when it comes to the

strug struggles that we face when we try to make a behavior change and it's not that we're our own enemy that's probably the wrong word it's more like we are our own biggest obstacle and we think that those obstacles are external but they're internal and the solutions that we're looking for are not going to be found outside of us they're always inside it is an inside job and if you want to kind of Master a change you're going to have to look Inward and unpack the mechanics of why you behave the way that you do

why you have historically always done a certain thing even though you have this knowledge and you know that it's not in your best interest uh so it's sort of journeying through the Subterranean landscape of your psyche to better understand what happened to you how you adapted to whatever happened to you like you have to approach it like Richard Schwarz with ifs you have to understand you know these exper experiences that you had in your youth that wired you a certain way like all of the behaviors that we have that are not in our best interest

that move us in errant ways are essentially defense mechanisms that at one point in time served us like we behave that way for a reason right and so we have to understand what those reasons are if we're going to figure out a way to address them and create you know kind of new patterns and neural Pathways that are going to lead us you know on the journey towards becoming the person that we aspire to be yeah very simplistically if alcohol is your way of managing stress which it is for many people you can on January

the 1st decide that you're going to quit and you can do 30 days without alcohol and you could feel the benefits but one or two things has to happen if you're going to make that change last for most people some people do it and that's all they need I I recognize that but many people can't if stress is the underlying cause of your alcohol consumption either you need to reduce the stress in your life so that you no longer need the alcohol to actually neutralize the stress or you have to find an alternative Behavior to

alcohol to help you manage your stress I mean that's a very simplistic way of looking at it but I think even within my profession the way we tend to give Public Health guidelines is this amount of units of alcohol is okay this amount is not this much will impact your liver will impact your brain it will impact your teeth or whatever it might be and I get that but I feel it's very dry there's a human level to those behaviors that we're not addressing and I would dare say that I don't think my profession has

been amazing at address the root causes of behavior change for many many years I think that we don't understand or we don't think about enough that every single behavior in our life serves a role you will only change the behavior in the long term if you understand the role that that behavior plays in your life MH and so when I think about Behavior change I think about it in a couple of different layers so layer one we can talk about healthy habits right how do you create a healthy habit and I've written about this in

previous books and I think yes it's very very important and there are some rules that you can follow for example I believe two of the most important rules that people can follow when trying to create healthy habits is number one make it easy and number to stick on the new Behavior your desired Behavior onto an existing habit how that plays out in my life for many years which I think I've spoken to you about before is I have a five minute strength workout every morning and I don't think I missed a day in five years

it has nothing to do with motivation or willpower it's because I make it easy it only takes me 5 minutes I do it in my pajamas I don't have to get ready right so it's super easy and I stick it on to my coffee habit so I make coffee every morning and therefore in the 5 minutes that my coffee is brewing I don't go on Instagram or email or look at the news I have a kettle bell and a dumbbell in my kitchen and I just do a five minute workout and then I go on

and drink my coffee and people may say well that's not enough and I would disagree with that because we understand understand the concept of toothbrushing that we all do four minutes a day I hope right and we know that generally speaking that will keep our teeth and our gums in good shape for life but we don't apply those principles when it comes to our lifestyle we make things really really difficult I'm not saying I don't lift heavy things at other times or go for a run or go for a walk or whatever it might be

but I have this momentum every single day that no matter how busy I am I still found minutes from me and it changes the way I view myself right so you can think about Behavior change in terms of how do you create a healthy habit and I think those two RS are very very helpful for people I've used those with patients for years but it's still not the root of the root right you can apply those principles but if you have negative selft talk or let's say like the the whole book is about this idea

that we are reliant we're overly reliant on things outside of ourself to feel good yeah you've created this very interesting heuristic called minimal Reliance and as somebody who who thinks a lot about change Behavior change how do you do it what is you know the higher order kind of root cause of why some people struggle with this and others don't and reflecting upon the messiness of our interior lives and trying to get a grip on you know the psychology of all of it you have come up with this very elegant way in which is thinking

about it in terms of the various externalities that we come to rely upon that impact habit formation and habit change and you know look I'm I say this in a way that probably is annoying the audience because I always bring it up but I tend to kind of see these things through 12ep and so if you just elaborate or extrapolate on Reliance and take it all the way to its extreme that's addiction right so if you're dependent on something that becomes you know an impediment to any kind of behavior change that erodes your resilience and

your sense of self-efficacy and and agency and the like right but by identifying the various ways in which we're kind of semi unconscious of how we're um unnecessarily overly Reliant upon certain things in a way that keeps us stuck I think is a really kind of cool and interesting lens into kind of this whole world yeah thanks man I really appreciate that I I thought long and hard about this I didn't want to just write another book that in any way repeated what I've previously put out I wanted to see if I could come up

with something fresh and original and a new way of looking at change and I really like this concept of minimal Reliance it's not zero reliance as no doubt will talk about it's a minimal Reliance I'm saying we're overly reliant on things in our outside world to feel good and those things are things outside of our control so again there's a couple of layers to this this could be for example that you are someone who needs everything to go right in order for you to feel good so you get up and your family are nice to

you and the children have put their shoes away and that there's no traffic on the way to work and that your boss [ __ ] you nicely and you know whatever there's no queue in your favorite coffee shop okay we all like those things to happen but if your inner well-being and how you feel is dependent on those things happening if you're reliant on those things happening as many people are dare I say most people are and how I used to be for much of my life you're always in this very fragile states where you

are like a puppet on a string so if the outside world goes the way in which I want the outside world to go I can feel good and if and when it doesn't I don't feel good right so I think that's a key thing that people have to understand because you can change your Reliance on those things very very quickly once you know that they're there so this book is about trying to bring this kind of dark side of us into the light go wow I didn't know that I was relying on so many things

but then there are some more bigger picture alliances that I think many of us have in the book I try and identify the nine key ones that I've identified in myself in my many patients over the years and I guess one of my favorite ones is the one that I write about in chapter one which I think is the most important chapter in the book which is called trust yourself and each chapter is addressing one of these relian so trust yourself is addressing our Reliance or our over Reliance on Experts now I think this is

Punchy and I think you know it's interesting to see how this lands with people because I am one of these so-called experts but I don't know about you rich but one of the things I've noticed in this health and wellness space over the past few years is that we have a barrage of information there's so much expertise out there but people are getting confused and then at the midst of all of that there is you know this growing distr quote unquote distrust of experts yeah and and and I think there's only one way through this

certainly for me right you may have this right I would find on my show that if one week I speak to one expert they're from Harvard they've got the right letters after their name and they might present that this kind of diet has been really helpful in mental health problems and they will uh let's say a ketogenic diet for example and they will share with you evidence to support their view I think you have a great conversation and let's say 8 weeks later you speak to somebody else like I will often do who has a

slightly different approach and goes well you know I think a plant-based diet is best for mental health problems and look at these three or four studies that support my view and people would often contact me on Instagram they send me a message say hey Dr chaty really like both of those episodes I thought they both sounded very respectable and very trusting I don't know which expert to trust and I think that's the wrong question rich with all my heart I believe it's the wrong question I don't think the most helpful question is which expert should

I trust I think the more powerful question and the more pressing question is why do I no longer trust myself and I say that as a medical expert you know having passed my specialist exams my general practice exams I have an Immunology degree I'm a professor at Chester medical school right I understand I've got all the labels of expertise but I still will say that I don't know for sure which is the right diet for any single person who's listening to me speak right now and what I would say to someone who gets confused I

would say well listen if you like both of their messages and you trusted what they had to say why not do an experiment for 4 weeks try and take this doctor's advice but whilst you're doing it pay attention this is what we don't do pay attention how do you feel what's your energy like what's your sleep like what are your relationships like what is your go gut like are you blo do you feel lighter you know and pay attention and then for the next four weeks take the advice from the other expert and again pay

attention to the same things we have as a society Rich outsourced our inner expertise to external experts and I've been doing this for a long time with patients and the patients who manag to transform their lives for good not just for a few weeks or a few months there's an inner knowing at some points they take my guidance and the Frameworks I provide for them and they go inwards and they go actually you know what do I know you said that maybe those foods to avoid those foods to have but I've experimented a few times

and I actually feel better when I eat like this I'm like great you know that you're feeling better like this let me at least do some blood test to check what's going on in your body and and there's a case in the book right and this may resonate with your audience I mean this is I think a powerful case study where there was a lady who came to see me she was very proactive about health she'd listen to health podcasts like yours or mine she'd read the blogs she'd read the books and she had heard

a gut health expert online say that you should strive to get 30 plant Foods in your diet every single week it will improve your gut microbiome okay so she's trying to do that and every time she goes above 10 or 12 plant Foods she's getting bloated she's not feeling good she's getting constipated and she feels like she's a failure this is the problem when we put all of our trust in external experts we start to feel like we're a failure so she comes in to see me says do chance I'm trying my best I've tried

to do it slowly I've tried to do different kinds of plant Foods I just can't do it I feel bad when I do it and I remember saying to her listen the health advice you've picked up online I'm not saying it's wrong I'm simply saying that no piece of Health advice in my experience works for every single person okay let me help you discover what is the right approach for you and so together over a few weeks and months we experimented and the truth is for her at that stage in her life and those two

things are both equally important what she found work for her was a more lower carb type diet and she would have 10 5 to 10 different plant foods to eat so there was lots of plants in a diet but it was you know 5 to 10 that she knew she could tolerate she felt great she had energy Vitality her blood test look amazing and again I think there's people out there who listen to our podcast rich and I think sometimes they probably do get confused because they're like which expert should I trust and we think

about the guests you've had over the years right you've spok to everyone you'll talk to plant-based experts you'll also talk to petera who'll talk about the benefits of animal protein right and people also who follow you like myself we deeply connect with your story of what happened to you and the chest pains you experienced I think in your 40s and how that encourage you to change your diet what we don't know unless as an element to your story I'm not familiar with what we don't know is what would have happened if you had changed your

diet to a whole food diet that wasn't just plant based right maybe you still would have got great health outcomes maybe not I'm not disputing there's the compassion element there's the ethical elements I understand that I'm talking purely through the lens of Health we don't know that you found I believe what works for you that's wonderful and I want every single person to find what works for them I mean there's a lot I mean you just you shared a lot so I want to tease out a few ideas in this I mean certainly intuition is

real and important I had a neuroscientist in here called Joel Pearson who who studies the nature of intuition and uh and how to unlock it and its powers uh I've also had Kimberly Snider in here who talked about the heart brain this source of wisdom that we kind of don't give enough attention to uh so I think I hear and appreciate everything that you have to share um and there are like too many experts saying to many different things and it's very overwhelming especially in the social media space that leads to confusion and self-doubt and

ultimately some form of analysis paralysis because you don't really know like who to trust or what to do and so yes you should look Inward and kind of connect with your heart's voice and and and try to pay attention to that I think at the same time it's worth noting that uh that we're all kind of unaware of our own biases and we have a tendency you know we we made to cry like I don't trust the experts except you know here's the person who's like telling me kind of what I want to hear and

he's a sort of expert and so you know I'm going to align myself with that person because there's a sort of confirmation bias and also it's kind of what I want to do and now I have a reason or an excuse to do that and I think on top of that maybe the bigger issue rangan and I'm curious your thoughts on this in order for your intuition to be trustworthy requires discernment which I know you talk about but on top of that a connection with yourself like a a a relationship with your interior life that

is mature enough so that you can distinguish impulse and reactivity from what is truly your intuition you know I think because we are so habituated uh in our Reliance on so many things and impulsed by stimuli that we can confuse like oh well my intuition is that I should go get that you know my body is telling me it needs a big Gul you know what I mean that would be an extreme version of that and no that's not your intuition that's that's just kind of like this impulsive thing to Sate a craving or a

desire in the moment and so without that kind of maturity to really be able to distinguish what is an impulsive reaction from what is truly into uh I think is necessary in order for your intuition to actually properly guide you yeah I think you make a great point and I think we have to practice like if we've spent our entire lives Outsourcing our inner expertise to external experts we're not going to be able to tune in we're not going to be able to just hear one podcast or read this book and go oh yeah great

intuition Brill right I'm going to start trusting myself if you spent your whole life or many years not trusting yourself you're not going to be able to suddenly start overnight it's a process that you have to practice just like if you want to run a marathon you're not going to suddenly just start going and running 20 mile runs you're going to start small and half a mile and one mile you're going to build up develop the skill learn what works learn when Oh I thought that was my intuition it was actually because I was feeling

stressed I I wanted that big gulp whatever it might be and so I believe 23 years into my medical career whilst I believe that every single person needs to find the right approach for them I believe that the most powerful daily practice for any individual in this current climate is a daily practice of solitude I really believe that with all my heart because if you don't spend time with yourself how on Earth are you going to listen to the signals your body is trying to tell you you're not and so this is where routines come

in this is where things like meditation or journaling like a period of your day where you're not looking outwards for answer you're looking inwards and you practice now I think there's a real value in routine and ritual particularly the same thing done every day because if you repeat the behavior each day the behavior stays constant so if something is different you know it's not because you changed your routine or your behavior you know it's because oh there's something different about you so a couple of years ago I've always been interested in uh breath work and

meditation and there's this gentleman called irn Lor who founded uh the company movat lots of natural movement I don't know if you seen his work or not but he's been doing this for 20 30 years or so and then he created a breathhold work meditation course and I've always been quite interested in 's approach and I thought that sounds interesting I'm going to do that it was an online course twice a week for 4 weeks and I remember the very first time I logged on I had just got to Stockholm because I was on a

book tour in Sweden I got to my hotel room so I wasn't I wasn't calm I just rushed on and one of the things he asked us to do was to all take an in breath as much as we can with no hyperventilation beforeand you just take one normal in breath and then hold your breath and count how long you can hold it for and I could do one minute within 4 weeks I was able to hold my breath for 4 minutes and 20 seconds now this is nothing like the Wim Hof technique where you

hyperventilate and you blow off Kart side actually Iran would probably say and he's pretty outspoken he would probably say that doing breath hold work with hyperventilation beforehand I think he says something like it's like doing cold immersion with a wet suit on what I learned in that course was how powerful your mind is so when you're holding your breath and your body is screaming for you to breathe if your mind is noisy you you've got to breathe if you can learn in those moments to quieten down your mind and that thoughts use up energy and

if you can just calm everything and he teaches you how to do this you can actually go for another minute another 2 minutes it was so transformative for me because it just showed me how much of my breathhold time it's not about the breathhold time it's about in that moment when your body is screaming for you to breathe if you can master your mind there you can Master it anywhere right so that practice has really helped me be there's many other things that have helped me as well but I would say that's contributed to me

feeling pretty non-reacted these days there's very little these days that I find bothersome like genuinely and I'll explain other things that I've done to get me to that point which actually helps Behavior change because we don't realize that most of our behaviors are there to soothe an internal discomfort the emotional stress that we generate with the way we interact with the world so going back to what you said about intuition why did I bring up this breathhold practice because I do it every morning but I do the same practice every single morning which means on

one morning like I could do it this week and it will be I could only do 1 minute and 10 seconds whereas on another day I can do three minutes and it helps me tune into myself because if I cannot do three minutes and it's only one minute it's because there's something going on inside me I'm feeling tight there's worry about something in my life you know there's too much stress I've taken on too much like whatever it might be I'm not saying everyone has to do that practice you can get this through a variety

of different practices if you like yoga and you have a 5 minute sequence or a 10-minute sequence that you like doing do the same one every morning on some days it will feel fluid and free on other days it will feel tight and rigid the practice isn't changing but your experience of that practice is different why because there's something going on inside of you so there's many ways you can start tapping into your intuition if you wake up and the first thing you do is look at your phone and start consuming information from the outside

and you continue doing that all day with emails and even if you're consuming great content this is something I've realized on my own life Rich even if you're consuming high quality content that's balanced that's nuanced if your whole life is spent outside of yourself getting inputs from the outside you're not tuning into what's going on inside that's why we can't give up sugar or alcohol or social media scrolling or online pornography or whatever it might be for many of us it's because we haven't spent enough time with our inner world and we think especially at

January we think at this time of year we need more information I need a new podcast to teach me new things sure some people do but I don't think it's more external knowledge we need it's that internal knowledge and the last time I was in in La was in March 2020 and we were a due to meet up and you recall everything was just starting to change you're like man I don't think we can meet up and I came here for meetings all the meetings start to get shut down I'm a different person now Rich

to who I was in March 2020 fundamentally I I there's a lightness in me with how I experienced a life that wasn't there and there's all kinds of things that have happened in the past 5 years that have led me to that point but I've never felt this good man like I I really feel this grounded calm Within Me which makes Behavior change actually relatively simple I think too often we say oh it's hard it's hard Behavior changes hard I used to say that but if I keep saying oh it's hard because you want to

connect with people and you want to make sure they know that you're feeling them I'm sort of prejudging their experience why does it have to be hard I believe it's only hard because we haven't got to the root if you can help people get to the root and they can start to understand that inner world I don't think it's as hard as we [Music] think I am a total gear head and I've learned that people often Overlook apparel but what you wear isn't just clothes it is without a doubt technology that can make or break

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offering an exclusive 10% disc account to redeem head over to on.com and sign up for On's [Music] newsletter within this there's this idea that you mentioned which is it is our inability to tolerate discomfort that creates our Reliance on these behaviors or these externalities to kind of soothe ourselves right and we do a lot of this unconsciously we're not even aware that we're doing it so first by drawing awareness to it we're then in a position to you know kind of take inventory of that and what I gather from this breath work practice like obviously

there's physiological benefits there's a lot of reasons to do this but one of the core kind of uh lessons out of it is that you can sit with your own discomfort yeah and and you can acclimate to that and suddenly it's not as uncomfortable as it was a week prior and you can withstand it for longer periods of time and that is a lesson that teaches you like oh just because I feel a certain way doesn't mean that I need to impulsively do something to change it right and I think within that there's Freedom so

if you're looking at Behavior change you're like well I do this thing and then you're like oh I guess I do this when I'm stressed to your point of well I can remove the stress but but that's trying to control something you can't control because there's externalities that are driving that stress but you can control your reaction to that stress and part of that is developing the capacity to kind of be in the discomfort and realize because I think our our lizard brains are like this is going to kill us we need to exit this

situation immediately or we need to do something so that we're not feeling this way because it because our brains are interpreting it as like a mortal threat 100% agree whilst I have used this breathhold practice to help me and many other things I don't think everyone has to do it it is primarily a psychological practice for me as you've sort of hinted at I'm not really that concerned about the physiological benefits that it may or may not give me I think the most important thing it gives me is this deep inner knowledge that I can

handle stuff even when that Primal threat of running out of oxygen is there in my body and every part of my body is saying you need to breathe now or this is it even if I can go 20 seconds longer into that it's like oh I can handle that I can handle that and as I was writing this book Rich I reflected on my clinical practice over the years and I honestly feel that many patients had this lowgrade anxiety that was built on this Foundation of fragility because many of our lives have become so comfortable

these days and we don't do uncomfortable things in a way that we had to Simply to survive several thousand years ago I don't think that many of us believe that we can trust ourselves when things go wrong as they inevitably will right things will go wrong at some point but if you're not testing yourself regularly to know that on a deep level you don't believe it and so this is also relates to what we said earlier about external knowledge you can keep hearing this stuff oh this is important or you you need to be able

to trust yourself you need to test yourself and and do uncomfortable things or whatever it might be but I think the most important things in life we don't learn from hearing about them we learn through experiencing them right you experience it yourself you know oh I can I can handle things I know that if they're going and get stuff I can handle this and so this whole idea of discomforts and there's a chapter called Embrace discomforts and it's this idea that basically as a doctor this is a huge interest to me because I think you

can make a case that pretty much all the diseases that are bankrupting modern healthc Care Systems and are putting such a strain on them and all the symptoms that we're suffering from and are causing us so much heartache in our own lives you can make a strong case that many of them are diseases of comfort they simply don't exist in traditional societies to anywhere near the same degree where they have pretty uncomfortable lives right in the sense that well you couldn't in traditional societies just stay in your Camp all day you had to get up

you had to move you had to get the food you had to bring it back you had to cook it there was discomfort built into your daily life humans are wide for Comfort we want to make things easier we shouldn't feel guilt or Shame about that right it is no one's fault that we don't want to take the stairs when they're there and we'd rather take the escalator or the lift right that is normal we want to make things easy the problem is is that the balance has changed in modern society certainly in Western Society

where maybe 40 50 years ago until then our desire for Comforts improved the quality of Our Lives we have nice houses we have air conditioning heating you know we can go to supermarkets and buy buy our Foods I kind of feel that the balance is tipped now where our desire for Comfort dare I say our addiction our Reliance on Comfort is now making us sick so we mentioned cold plch before and cold punch has become this really you know Hot Topic in Wellness that some people love some people say is a ridiculous fad for people

who live in LA right that's that's what people say online and the truth is it's neither for me yes we may hear about the benefits for dopamine and nor adrenaline there may well be some physical health benefits but for me all of these kinds of practices the benefits are psychological if you intentionally engage with discomfort even when you don't have to on a deep level you're sending your body a message that I can handle things when adversity happens in my life I know I can handle it because I practice regularly right people who work out

regularly who exercise do Ultras or whatever sort of stuff you've done in in the past like you know that you can handle stuff because you've gone and proved it to yourself and so in that chapter I really try and make it really practical for people and say listen in terms of some practical take-homes you don't have to do breath holding you don't have to do coal plunge unless you want to do these things but you do need in my view a regular practice of discomfort now that could be really really simple and I list out

something called discomfort rules yeah you have this idea of of replacing decisions with rules yeah so explain that look if you leave everything up to how you feel in that moment you're going to struggle you're going to get paralyzed by choice you're going to procrastinate and if you make a rule that you internalize okay this is how I want to live my life and I appreciate some people don't like the word rule okay they find it too restrictive okay find a different word but for me I like that word for me it really really resonates

it's like you know people want to make everything black and white you know rules are either good or bad it's like hold on a minute for some people the sort of internalization of certain rules are really helpful for other people maybe not but for me a few years ago I decided that I was always going to take the stairs unless there was a damn good reason not to it was a rule I made and I internalized it which means 5 years on my default everywhere is to take the stairs unless you know I've got like

my whole family with me in four bags and both arms or whatever it might be I've changed my default if I leave it up to how I feel in the moment do I fancy the stairs or the ah you know I'll take the lift whatever it might be to the point when I arrived in La about a week ago you come off the plane there's I I can still remember it there's I think these there's two long escalators and there's one staircase on the right I with my bags went straight onto the stairs I think

I was the only person I saw whilst doing it and again I'm not judging anyone I'm not criticizing anyone it's because I made a rule that I only take the lift or the escalate it when there's an exceptional reason to do so I also acknowledge I am able-bodied and I have two legs that are able to do that and people can't this could be for anyone else it could be at the end of my hot shower I just turn it a little bit cold for 20 seconds not like freezing cold like in a ice bath

just a little bit cold it could be that you decide that you're going for a 30 minute walk every single day rain or shine right even if it's cold and it's wintry and whatever you're still going to go it doesn't matter what it is right so could even you can even flip it we think about discomfort as doing hard things but I quite like this that I wrote about this idea that in the modern world if you're sitting on your sofa at 10 p.m. and you've got a great box set going on on Netflix and

you're really enjoying it I would say the uncomfortable thing to do is to press Stop close the television and if you live in a house go upstairs to your bedroom the comfortable thing and easy thing to do is to just sit there right and watch another episode and I'm sure everyone has done that at some point even if it's the expense of their sleep and therefore their health and their wellbeing the next day it's very very common because it's easier to stay there especially because Netflix and YouTube apply the rules of behavior change I mentioned

before rule number one make it easy these guys don't run one episode Into The Next Episode out of the goodness of their hearts right they know that if you make something easy to do humans do it so they do it they're a business they're doing what they need to do I'm not criticizing them I'm saying that you could have a rule for example that ah you know what midweek I'm never going to watch more than one episode it's a rule that you internalize even if you're in the middle of a bot set that you're loving

ah you know I say in the week I don't do it because it means I go to bed late I'm Moody the next day I have more sugar I have more caffeine whatever it might be so I'm always about trying to make things accessible to people I've worked in practice over the years I've worked in affluent areas I spent a lot of time in very socially prived areas I feel it when I come to LA and I get immersed in this wellness world that I've been in the last 7 to 10 days I love it

I'm interested in this stuff but I know this is not how most of humanity live and I'm always thinking in my podcast or in this book how do you make this applicable to everyone right it's not about whether you can afford the latest 10 grand cold plune bath if you can afford it and you like it go for your life I'm not anti that at all but often we think oh I can't afford that so we go that's a load of rubbish it doesn't apply to me no the principle does apply to you the principle

is if you can intentionally engage with discomfort you will change how you feel about yourself and that's key what I said about New Year's resolutions before about what is the energy behind that behavior if you don't feel that you're capable and that everything's against you you're going to find Behavior change hard hard but one of the reasons for example why I like that 5 minute strength workout that I do every morning I did it this morning right I take my ceter with me everywhere I have my coffee in a hotel room or I'm saying with

a friend at the moment in La it grounds me it's my little ritual and it shows me every day that I can trust myself right that chapter chapter one is called trust yourself but I spoke Rich to a body language expert on my podcast a few years ago called Vanessa van Edwards and she said to me rongan when a human being meets another human being for the first time they're asking themselves two questions can I trust them can I rely on them I thought it was really profound I thought yeah that totally makes sense but

over the last years I figured out Rich that we're asking ourselves the same two questions every day can I trust myself can I rely on myself I believe that one of the most toxic things things we can do is say we're going to do something and not do it which is what we all do especially in New Year I'm going to do this I'm going to spin four times a week whatever it might be because we say we're going to do it we don't do it and so we feel like we're a failure so the

energy behind that change is problematic the way to flip that is what I often say to patience which is make one small promise to yourself every single day and keep it my five minute strength workout that I do each day is a promise that I made to myself and it shows me that I can trust myself and I can rely on myself even if I don't like the news headlines even if I've got loads to do at work or there's something I need to sort out with my wife whatever it might be I never allow

that to get in the way of five minutes for myself and I tell you when people say five minutes is not enough I challenge that I have helped suicidal patients change their lives for good and it started with a 5 minute habit every day because if you say you're going to do something and it only takes 5 minutes and you do it each day you build momentum you build trust in yourself and you change the way you start to see yourself you're no longer someone who says they're going to do stuff and is not able

to you show yourself with real world evidence every single day that you can do it the two most important pieces in all of that are a removing decision fatigue by making a rule or a promise to yourself however you want to couch that and holding yourself to that holding yourself to account for that promise that you made to yourself is kind of the engine of self-esteem because if you follow through on that then with each you know step that you take or each follow-through action you're affirming your ability to trust and rely upon yourself right

and that leads to self-esteem and a sense of self-efficacy and agency like oh I did this like what else could I possibly do but I think the the really important piece is is on the word small like I think that especially around new years's everybody casts their gaze way off into the Horizon and they make big bold promises to themselves that they then Proclaim on social media and to their friends that they're going to do this thing and they haven't really calibrated their timeline properly and they've bitten off perhaps more than they can chew and

I think they're thinking of this change that they want to make as this giant bold statement or this broad stroke or this ambitious goal that they're finally going to go after and Tackle um and they lose sight of the fact that the engine of change is the tiny little things that you do every single day and that's not sexy and it's sort of anonymous and it's not something that you're going to post on social media um but if you truly want to make a change master that change and sustain it it's all about like what

are you doing in the present moment what is the right next thing to do what is the right next action and generally those are very small tiny little things that assemble gradually over time to you know manifest in the change that that you're aiming for it takes longer it's just more of a slog you know that doesn't have you know giant Peaks and valys and and so it's harder I think for the human brain to get their head around it and um and I think within that like to James clear's point in atomic habits habits

are the uh compound interest of self-improvement right so what are these habits that you're trying to master and I think when you drill down to very small things that you can do every day like I'm just going to do this F minute workout I I have to do that before I have my coffee I'm going to do this five minute breath work practice whatever it is and holding yourself to that uh even if it feels like well what does my breath work have to do with this other goal that I have like understanding that these

things are all related that relates it it all goes back to your ability to be present with yourself because as you mentioned earlier you can't trust your intuition and you unless you have that connection with yourself and if you're so distracted you're unable to be present and if you're not present you're most likely running a story in your mind about something that happened in the past or tripping out about what's about to happen or going to happen in the future while you're you're kind of passively living your life never fully present with yourself and thus

not capable of seeing what's in front of you right in the very moment that you could do that would move you forward in that direction yeah I love that rich you mentioned the word Slug it can feel like a slug um can I ask you a question yeah do you ever find brushing your teeth a slug no it's just something that I do but I would say that for example if you use a running metaphor and you're training for a marathon or an ultramarathon you know basically every day you got to get up and you

got to get the shoes on and you got to get out the door and sometimes it's going to it's going to be a slog and you're not going to feel great and you feel like this isn't moving me forward but that's just all part of the process so I guess that's what I'm really yeah the only reason I bring that up is because I think these small changes can actually be very enjoyable right I really believe that I'm I'm really trying to reframe the Nar narrative around change I've seen patients in the darkest places which

change their lives okay you know in your with your own personal Journey how you can go from down here to up here right it is possible it's more possible than people think and I agree with you that you have to start small now why do you have to start small well I believe that some people can make big changes overnight but generally speaking when I've seen that in my practice it's been because there's been some seriously traumatic life event like a divorce or a bereavement or someone's lost their house something so massive that it's caused

them to confront their life and think no I need to live completely differently or whatever it might be if you don't have that driving you I think it is very difficult to make that big change quickly I I've rarely seen it no it's pain is the lever for that rare is the individual raises their hand when they're not in the middle of some crisis and just kind of volunteers Dr but think let me juster this the idea that you're getting at is this doesn't need to be a slog it doesn't need to be burdensome it

can be enjoyable but I think within that and I think you would agree because you wrote a whole chapter about embracing discomfort in your life like you need to raise your tolerance for discomfort and be okay with that so if you're going to quit sugar or like you know reduce your sugar intake you're going to be uncomfortable because you're used to doing that thing for a very long time and it's soothing an emotional need and making you feel good when you feel stressed and if you stop doing that even if you replace it with something

new that's healthy there will be discomfort and I think people are opt out of this whole process because they can't tolerate the discomfort and they just give up or say I can't do this so you know developing that relationship with discomfort and really realizing like not only can you kind of withstand it but this sort of comes with the p and I would even say to the woman who tried to eat 30 plants a week and was experiencing these issues I probably would have told her like you probably haven't done it long enough like your

microbiome takes a while to acclimate to this and the bloating is like because you're seating it with a different kind of you know microbial environment and it takes a while so stay in it you know I mean and maybe that's the wrong advice and I'm not a doctor but I think it's applicable the wisdom of that is applicable to anybody like but hence why because we're so Comfort oriented and our culture is oriented around basically kind of prioritizing ease in in everything that we do we are divorced from that experience of discomfort and the signal

that it tells our brain is like we need to stop or do something else and return to that comfortable place but if we can withstand it long enough so that we can you know weather that period of craving when we feel like we just can't take another breath without reaching out for that thing that we're used to doing and realizing like oh I I have the resilience to do that is an empowering thing but I think to say you're not going to experience discomfort or it doesn't have to be that way is perhaps on some

level setting people up for disappointment rather than just saying yeah it's going to be this way and you can do it and I believe in you yeah I don't disagree with any of that right I'm not saying it is going to be super easy that every single day that you're going to wake up and feel like doing the five minute action that you commit smaller the more you reduce these actions to you know very easy lifts so you can like kind of Stack tiny winds along the way I think is a is a very gradual

and easy way to kind of build your capacity for discomfort and and then of course the byproduct of that being like you know a growing resilience so I've got four things in my head that I that came up for me as you were saying that and I'll see if I can remember them as a way of responding okay so first of all that lady who was struggling with the 30 plant Foods when I brought up that example I was very particular to say that was the right approach for her at that point in her life

which I think speaks to what you're saying which is you didn't tell her to just suck it up no I know I said okay look this is working right let's stick with this at the moment and then let's see where we evolve this to in one month in two months in three months but you're not going to get there by trying to do it feeling like a failure feeling that oh my God I can't follow this amazing health out there I'm the failure so no trust yourself a bit more go actually you know what at

this moment in my life this is the approach that's working for me great let's get you stable there let's get your stress down let's help you sleep better let's help build up your microbiome and let's see then what you can tolerate in the future right it's a personalized approach that was one thing I wanted to say you mentioned about the emotional stress that we might be feeling that we then soed with sugar and I've got a really practical exercise that it sounds really really simple but I have used it with great success with myself and

many patients over the years which I'd love to share right it's called the three FS so I want people to imagine the scenario that they' being really great in a comes with their choices in the day and they're sat on their sofa at 9:00 p.m. watching something the depths of January let's say and maybe they're living somewhere dark and they are craving ice cream right they want to they want to have ice cream and that this is very very common more common than we might think okay so the three FS are feel feed and find

okay so if you're sitting there and you're craving the ice cream before you go to your freezer and get it out think about the first F which is feel what am I really feeling is this physical hunger or is this emotional hunger okay just take a pause you may not know again like going to about what we said before many people have never even taken that step they feel I crave ice cream damn it I'm going to go and get it and eat it I'm saying just take a little pause ask yourself what are you

feeling and then go and get it right no problem go and get it and have it but by doing that first step you are starting to build up this awareness this intuition this understanding of why you engage in certain and behaviors many patients over the years which would come to see me they don't have that awareness right they really don't so the first Ser is just starting to build that and as soon as you become aware of something you start to change your relationship with that thing right people often go well now that I'm aware

now what I said Okay hold your horses the most powerful step you will ever take for any kind of behavior change is awareness become aware of what's driving you right the next time you sit on the and you're craving it you can do it all in the first go if you want but let's say you can't do it cuz you're trying to build up you're trying to start small do the first fep and then go to the second F okay so what's the first F oh I'm feeling really stressed cuz I just had a r

with my partner the second f is so the first f is feel what am I feeling the second f is feed which is how does food feed that feeling oh so I'm feeling stressed when I have sugar or ice cream it temporarily at least makes me feel less stressed oh right that's why I'm going to I'm not actually physically hungry I had a full meal one hour ago oh my God this is the way I manage stress or whatever it might be it may be that you spent all day on your Zoom calls you didn't

take a lunch break you've had no time to yourself so this is your little treat to yourself or maybe which is very very common you're feeling lonely right you live by yourself or maybe you your whole family are out you've not seen anyone all day and you're feeling alone and this ice cream you're going to have is going to make you feel less alone okay fine now you're understanding what's going on then the third F which you can either do that time or the next time is now that you know the feeling now that you

know how food is feeding the feeling now can you find an alternative Behavior to feed that feeling right so this could be oh I'm feeling stressed sugar is what I go to to help me manage the stress what else could I do oh well you know what I really like yoga maybe I'll go on YouTube and do a 10-minute yoga sequence oh I haven't had any time to myself today because I've been on Zoom calls and the ice cream is a little treat to me what else could I do oh you know what I could

do I could light a candle in the bathroom run a bath and I can nourish myself with a 20 minute hot bath it doesn't really matter what it is it's just the understanding that that behavior is serving a role it's a really really powerful exercise at least in helping you understand what is driving me to this behavior and frankly you can use that for sugar ice cream alcohol pornography uh you could even use it for your alcohol consumption you know maybe not if you you know are really Advanced with your alcoholism you want to change

your relationship with it you're star to develop an understanding so that 3F exercise if anyone feels that they need help changing your behavior I'd encourage them to maybe give that a go and then also want to just address what you said about 5 minutes uh Rich because if we look at the science right because I'm all about trusting yourself and tuning into your intuition it doesn't mean that science has no value I'm not saying that at all I'm saying we have overdone it I believe in society where we're so obsessed now with what the latest

research says that we forget about what we're feeling or how you know how something might apply to us and this is very much informed by my experience as a doctor when I've realized that different approaches work for different people even if you look at the very best research paper on let's say I don't know a certain medication and you say these 100 people are not going to take this medication they're going to be the control group these 100 will is it statistically significant the impact that this medication is having yes it is okay we bring

it in no okay we say it doesn't work the problem is even within those 100 people even if we say it doesn't work it would have worked for some people but it just wasn't enough to make it statistically significant so that's why I'm saying scientific studies are really useful and they're helpful but they're not everything for the individual we have to use them to help guide the individual now what I was trying to say about the 5 minute Health hacks which I think could be incredibly helpful is the science of behavior change is very very

clear on this when you make things small you are more more likely to stick with them in the long term why is that well there's many reasons one of them has to do with motivation so in January we overly rely on motivation we think if we want it enough we're going to do it but motivation never lasts Professor BJ fol calls us the motivation way motivation goes up motivation comes down if you make your behavior really difficult to do you will do it when your motivation High first two weeks in January right you'll do it

but when life gets in the way you've had a busy day at work you're feeling stressed you've got to take the kids somewhere after school whatever it might be you will no longer do that behavior if you said you were going to spin for one hour four times a week you'll do it for the first two weeks of January but you won't do it on a busy day so if you make your behavior really easy like 5 minutes you'll do it when your motivation is high and when your motivation low that's the reason you got

to go small and the second rule which I talk about is where you going to put that behavior in your life right because the theme so far is small actions add up very quickly right so we make it too hard let's try and help people say actually you know what small action what small promise can I commit to each day people often don't think about where they're putting that behavior in their life and it's a huge problem every single Behavior we engage with needs a trigger right of some sort so the ice cream that we're

having having on the sofa needs a trigger it's that stress that we're feeling that we're soothing with the ice cream for me to be here with you today I could have relied on my memory and memory happens to be a trigger it's just the most unreliable trigger that exists the next best as evidenced by the research is some sort of notification so a Post-It note or a Google calendar notification oh I've got to be at Rich's Studio by noon today CU I've agreed to do a podcast with him that works but the very best trigger

for us to make a behavior stick in the long term is to stick it on to an existing habit so an existing habit is something that we're already doing without any conscious thoughts that's why I stick on my 5 minute workout onto my coffee at 5:30 a.m. I don't need a reminder in my calendar to make coffee I don't need my assistant to give me a call say ronga don't forget to make your black coffee today right it sounds ridiculous but the reason I'm using this example is because it's real and it works this is

why I haven't missed a day for 5 years I haven't missed a day brushing my teeth for 5 years so why would I miss a strength workout each day because I've applied the same principles it's only 5 minutes so I can never say I don't have enough time and I stick it on to an existing habit and now it's the most natural thing in the world for me I don't think about it and the reason I bring up toothbrushing which is is because nobody had the habit of toothbrushing when they were 3 years old right

their parents or their caregiver kept reminding them Hey listen you got to brush your teeth right why do we do it why at your age and at my age are we able to engage in toothbrushing every day well there's many reasons but it kind of followed those two rules it's easy it's only 2 minutes and when we go into the bathroom at the same time every day it's easy the toothbrush is there the toothpaste is there if the toothbrush was in a different room and your flossing was in a completely different room you wouldn't do

it as much so so in my kitchen there's a dumbbell and a kettle bell that lives there a few years ago my wife did say to me baby you you going to leave this stuff here in the kitchen I'm like yeah I'm going to leave it in the kitchen because if I put it away in the garage or the cupboard it ain't ever going to get used so I've created an environment that visually triggers me every day and I've applied the two most important principles hence I do that now you can argue yes strength workouts

do what they're good for my my lean muscle they're good for my brain health they have an impact on my hormones I get all that I love all that science as well but again I think the primary benefit of my 5 minute daily practice is not that it's psychological it's me showing myself with evidence each day that I can trust myself and I can rely on myself and I think if people take nothing else from this conversation Rich if they all commit to thinking okay right I'm struggling I'm going to do one five minute thing

a day and I'm going to do it for the next 7 days or the next 14 days at the same time I 99% guarantee that they will start to change the way that they view themselves and the way they experience day-to-day life going to get in my daily ag1 this is a habit I started maybe I don't know six or seven years ago tastes great 75 vitamin and minerals packed into every scoop and it's energizing good for your body super simple super easy super convenient particularly when I'm on the road when I'm traveling when I'm

moving around a lot I keep the travel packs everywhere I go so they're always within Arms Reach and that way I know that uh I'm doing what's best for my body on The Daily so if you're looking to establish a new healthy habit this here try ag1 for yourself it's the perfect way to prioritize your Wellness that's why I've been partnering with ag1 for so long and right now ag1 is offering new subscribers a free $76 gift when you sign up you'll get a welcome kit a bottle of D3 K2 and five free travel packs

in your first box so make sure to check out drink a1.com SLR to start your new year on a healthier note two key ideas that I want to uh focus in on the first is this idea of environment and I'm glad you brought that up obviously if you want to drive healthy habits you want to create an environment that is conducive to making those habits easy and accessible if you look at the healthiest metropolitan cities across the world if you go to Amsterdam or Copenhagen everyone's on a bike because the urban kind of layout of

those cities is conducive to riding bikes right like it lends itself to making that behavior Choice the Easy Choice right in our world like much of our environment is not conducive to making the Healthy Choice um I've spoken with Dan Butner he goes to cities and you know talks to Mayors about like how they can Blue Zone their their area and it's like well you got to like recreate the envir so that the Healthy Choice becomes the Easy Choice you got got to get rid of the vending machines in the offices and the schools you

got to create bike Lanes you got to do all these things right because we're wied for Comfort right exactly because otherwise you know left to our own devices we're going to opt for the comfortable Easy Choice we can't control uh the environments of of you know the cities that we live in but we can control the environment of our home so when you told the story about the ice cream I'm thinking like well just just get rid of the ice cream and in the freezer and then cuz like all of the things that you have

to all those questions the fs and all that kind of stuff like if the ice cream's not there then it's not even an option and you're forced to either sit with your discomfort or discover that healthy Habit to ameliorate that stress or you know emotional dissonance that you're experiencing same thing with toothbrushing right like how do you make the healthy new semi uncomfortable Choice the Easy Choice by creating an Environ that's conducive to it you can do that with these rules and you can do that with you can make a rule like hey when I

go to the grocery store my rule is I don't buy ice cream you know like then it never ends up in the house like those sorts of things too I think are super helpful so your book you have these eight relian that kind of impede getting the way of personal growth and well-being and there's Health considerations there's psychological considerations you go into detail on all of them we've talked about a few of them but I sort of feel like motivation should have been the n Reliance that you know we turn to thinking that it's driving

us in a good direction where our Reliance upon motivation actually is leading us astray because we think that we need to be motivated or inspired in order to make this change and Neuroscience says otherwise like you have to develop the reflex to take the action irrespective of the motivation or the inspiration because it's a very unreliable energy source um so if you're sitting around going how do I get the willpower to do this thing you're asking the wrong question what you need to do is figure out a way to just do the thing and the

more you kind of do the thing these tiny little things willpower is almost like a product of that or the more motivated and inspired you will become because you are make you you're sort of living up to that promise that you've made to yourself and that kind of creates a deeper emotional connection to continue that journey and you know with it the kind of degree of difficulty you become more motivated to like stretch yourself I love that question I love this idea that motivation should have been in there I'm going I'm going to respond to

that in just a moment what I was going to say about what you said about the person who's craving the ice cream on the Sur you saying don't bring it there in the first place couple of things to say on that first of all I completely agree when I was changing my lifestyle for the better maybe 10 or 12 years ago when I really started to go okay my lifestyle is impacting the way that I feel and my short-term and my long-term health I started with diets I think like many people and I thought well

if I don't want to eat it I can't bring it in the house because if it's in the house at some point one day I will be tied I will be stressed the cupboard will open it will end up in my gob and so for many years I've said to patients and you know we've just put a post out today on Instagram it's 10 years since my first episode of Doctor in the house went out on bbc1 where I went into fam's houses who were sick and helped them reverse their illnesses in 6 weeks right

I would say to them as well don't use that your willpower in the house and I think that's really really important now I have posted about that several times on Instagram and there is a small group of people who will push back at that and they will say if you truly become present with yourself and understand your drivers you can have it there and not engage with it yeah but how many people are are such a master of that they do it it's sort of like you know not to always go back to alcoholism but

like when you're newly sober like you just probably shouldn't be in the same kind of like room with a bunch of alcohol later on long-term sobriety you can be around it it's not like doing anything to you but like when you're at the beginning phases of trying to break a habit and form a new one I agree I so I think this actual issue speaks to another Reliance in the book which is chapter 5 Reliance on being right which is the chapter called take less offense and it's this idea that that approach of not using

a willpower in the house is going to work for a lot of people now if you have gone in touch with yourself and you can literally have chocolate bars and biscuits and ice cream sitting there that you're visually seeing every day you don't need to go for it that is great but some I will get attacked for this advice and I'll say that is problematic you're not helping people understand themselves and it's like wait a minute we're all at different stages on the process of change that goes to the third Reliance which is this desire

to be like like you know okay so so what so they're attacking you who cares yeah I'm I'm good with that well I'm sure we'll get to that so I agree with that advice at the same time so I still even though I feel that I'm really grounded and calm these days and I really feel that I can pick up my emotional drivers now I still don't have stuff in my house that I don't want to eat because it's just one less Temptation and you have to use that willpower every time you leave the house

these days right so I don't think you should so I completely agree with you now going to the second point you were making about motivation why was there not a chapter directly on motivation and as you were saying it I was think that's a really good point why was there not because I spent a long time thinking about what are the key relian that I feel most people stroke many people have in society and the reason I think motivation wasn't one of the alliances is because I think it is covered by other alliances so what

I mean by that is the whole idea in this book is that you will only CH you will only make change that lasts if you really get to the root cause Okay so let's take I let me take a random chat sir um the Reliance on busyness okay how many people particularly in Western Society overwork right chronically stressed keep pushing it they can't switch off in evenings they can't switch off at weekends okay where does that drive come from and I talk about the book that this Reliance on business actually I believe is a a

Reliance on feeling important so all of us as humans want to feel a value to people right we want it's also a it can be a distraction distraction as well if you don't like going home or you're just uncomfortable unless you're constantly like occupied by doing then you know that's going to lend itself to no question but through the lens of we want a feel of value to people and I think you'll resonate with this Rich because it's a topic you've brought up on this show many times over the years if we don't have a

strong sense of community around us we have no way of showing our value to others experiencing this kind of feedback from others that we are a value to them we have to seek it somewhere now many of us in the world today have moved away from our communities and tribes for work opportunities for weather whatever it might be so we're away from our tightly knit tribes so we don't often well many of us don't feel a value we don't feel that we're doing something that actually is helping people around us and and actually people need

us and that they can rely on us so I think some of it comes from a Reliance or this need to feel important now what's that got to do with motivation and I'm trying to think this human real time Rich that old chapter is about this idea that many of us are overly working we're chronically stressed and it's making us sick and there's loads of case studies that I talk about patients I've seen over the years who I feel stress was the final trigger for them to get their autoimmune disease let's say wasn't the only

thing but it was the final trigger that set it off if you are overworking because there's this lack in your life that you don't feel worthy they don't feel you do imposs at things or whatever it might be you can keep trying to use motivation to tell you oh my God I need to work less um there's a statistic in the UK uh saying that 88% of UK workers in the past two years have experienced some degree of burnout which is a staggering statistic and is I think a pretty alarming readout at the state of

modern society certainly in the UK I I would imagine it's probably worse in the US I would imagine the reason you're overworking yes could be a distraction but it could also be this underlying need that you have to feel important that you don't have you don't feel of value which is why the final chapter is all about community and the importance of community and so you think you need motivation to change that behavior but sometimes it's not that you need motivation to overcome that behavior you need to get to the root cause of why you

need that behavior in the first place if you get to the root cause of why you're working so hard I feel you don't need motivation to overcome that behavior and I think I can don't you need motivation to even perform that autopsy like like how do you get motivated to even do the inquiry necessary to get to the root cause of what it is that's driving it and so I think that on a kind of more Global meta level it's sort of like if you're so busy and you're so stressed and you're so exhausted you're

drained of the life force you're probably going to lack motiv right like you're going to be like I'm too tired to do anything and now you're asking me to do this other thing I'm just not motivated to do it yeah so motivation you know is needed for anything right for me to walk through this door and sit here I need some level of motivation right because I I have to want to be here I have to have taken the the taxi here I have to walk through the door it's not the motivation it's not important

and yes you can make the case that one of the chapters should have been a Reliance some motivation but in answer to your original question I believe that motivation is weaved in throughout many of the chapters yes I accept that you need a degree of motivation to do anything in life you know the book's called mate change at lasts if you're not motivated to try and improve your life in some way I suspect you're not listening to this conversation right now right so by virtue of the fact that someone is tuning into this on YouTube

or audio whatever they're listening they're probably looking for something in their life or maybe they love your show they just like hearing your voice te you whatever it is but it's like this is a your podcast is is a podcast that helps people transform right it does many things but it helps people see themselves differently in the world and it provides hope that oh there is another option for me I can live a more meaningful life perhaps that I'm that I'm leading now so yes you need it on some level but I don't think I

needed I certainly felt when I was writing it that I didn't need a whole chapter on motivation because I think it's woven into the others I think it's baked into the Reliance on Comfort piece mostly because you said like oh I needed to be motivated to come here you know I had to want to come here but part of change with respect to the discomfort piece is doing things you don't want to do and I think if you're Reliant upon motivation in order to do those things then you're not going to get very fars yeah

so it's it's like not waiting to feel inspired or motivated not relying like motivation is great and if you have it if you're listening to this you probably have some level of motivation but I think it's the dependency on motivation where people get LED astray uh and the antidote to that is developing this like reflex to act irrespective of how you feel about performing the action because if you're going to change a behavior there's discomfort involved and from time to time you're not going to want to do it right and so it's like if you

don't want to do it and you're like well I'm going to wait until I feel motivated to do it then you're doomed right so it's like okay no but it and it goes to the rule piece too no I I made a promise to myself or this is my rule like I do this thing I made a promise to myself you're not you are detaching from Reliance upon motivation to instigate action is the that's the point that I'm trying to make for sure on that business piece I've got two practical exercises I'd love to share

if that's okay because I for many years would specialize in autoimmune disease so although I was a family practitioner GP I would see lots of patients who have chronic autoimmune problems and they couldn't get better and they were looking for a more holistic approach and one thing I would do when I would see them is I would go through their entire lives and plot out this timeline and I would say in 95% plus of cases within the six months prior to the diagnosis or the symptoms that led to the diagnosis there was a major piece

of stress in their lives like huge work stress or a divorce or something massive I can't say 100% of the time I can't honestly say it was 100% but it was 95% plus of the time right it's very very common we do know that chronic stress is a huge trigger and contributor to autoimmune disease so I have seen so many patients over my life who wish they'd started earlier who thought they could keep pushing it and working through weekends and just pushing through just to make a little bit more just oh just let me get

settled in this way and then I'll be okay and so many of them wish they'd started earlier because they were reliant on busyness they were pushing through and so I've had a couple of exercises that I've developed to help me and patients and I'd love to share them with your audience in case it helps them one of them is called write your own happy ending and I really thought about this exercise a few years ago especially as I as I was hearing about the regrets of the dying so there's this wonderful Palace of carness called

bronny W who wrote the book The Five regrets of the dying I had the most beautiful conversation with her on my podcast a couple of years ago like it was a gorgeous A Soulful spiritual conversation and she was a Pala of care nurse for maybe seven or eight years and she said wrong and listen people say the same things on their deathbed like they all say the same things some version of I wish I'd work less I wish I'd spent more time with my friends and family I wish I'd allowed myself to be happy allowed

myself to be happy that's interesting phrasing I wish I'd lived my life and not the life that other people expected of me these are so common they are so Universal and even as I say them and I've said them before and I thought about them before they really connect with me on a deep level because for me through the lens of how do we make change that lasts we think about what people say on their death bed and go well how can we how can we apply those tools now so that we're not on our

deathbed having the same regrets and so I do have this really simple exercise that I know can be so helpful for people if they do it not if they hear it and go oh that sounds really nice and then they go on with their run all their day you got to take action you've got to do something inspiration without action will not lead to change you have to do something on the back of it so the exercise is in two parts Rich okay and perhaps you know we could do it together you know and see

what you would say to this so the first part is we imag imine that we're on our Death Beds right now okay so rich would say to you imagine you're on your deathbed this is your final day okay this is it look back on your life what are three things you want to have done I've actually done them all like I feel pretty good okay great I've said this before too I mean obviously like you can always say I wish I'd done this or that or you know there's always like no matter how much time

you've spent with your family and your loved ones there's always more that you could have but I don't have I don't have a lot of regrets and I've said this before but if I don't wake up tomorrow like I I'm I'm I'm pretty good okay so that's awesome and you've obviously been on your own journey of transformation and I'm sure through this stressed out and I work too much and I you know get caught up in things that are are distract me and you know don't so so let me let me phrase another way you

know like I I can identify myself as Reliant upon all eight of these things in different ways so I'm not saying that I've transcended anything you know well let me phrase it another way then like it's not about regrets I'm not asking I'm saying that this exercise is called write your own happy ending so like I guess what is the dream on your deathbed like what is it that you want like for I mean you don't have to answer it but in essence for most people it is the things it is the opposite of the

things that we just heard right so for me when I did this a few years ago and I do it relatively regularly to keep making sure that I'm still aligned with it with what I want on that deathbed and again does one exercise work for everyone no but for many people they find this incredibly helpful it has been transformative for me in a variety of different ways so on my deathbed I believe that I look back on my life and number one I will want to have spent quality time with my friends and family number

two I would want to have had time to pursue my own passions and number three I will want to have done something that leaves a positive impact on the lives of others I'm pretty clear that those are three things I'm going to want on my deathbed to be able to say so the second part of the exercise is that you zoom back right into the present day and you come up with three what I call Happy habits right and I have mine written down piece of paper by old school with a bit of blue tack

on my fridge at home so going back to behavior change I'm being visually triggered by it every time I'm in my kitchen right which is every day multiple times a day so at the moment what I have written down is number one if I have five meals with my wife and kids each week where I'm undistracted by work that's what I want right so I put down five undistracted meals with my wife and children where I'm not thinking about emails or work where I'm fully present with them I'm not saying I don't do anything else

but that's what I currently have if I'm doing that regularly I know that I'm working on those relationships okay the second thing if I have had had time each week to either go for a long run or to sit with my guitar and write a song or sing I know I found time to pursue my passions and the third one is for me like you if I release an episode of my podcast each week which I've been doing for 7even years now I'm doing something that improves the lives of others now why it's so powerful

rich is because we're living in an era now where our to-do lists are never done like never done we and we've got this negativity bias in our brains which has kept humans alive for so many years but it's working against us in this modern environment so we focus on what we haven't done and too many of my patients over the years they basically only fit in the important things when everything else was done the problem is everything else is never done you could complete your email inbox right you can get to zero and then take

a break go make yourself a cup of tea for 15 minutes sit down get some sun and come back you could have had 20 new emails in that time there's nothing you can do about it so this exercise says okay it doesn't help you get your to-do list done directly it does in other ways but in essence it helps you focus on what is truly important so that exercise for me means that I make sure each week to the best of my ability I get those three things done if I don't I don't anymore go

back to guilt and shame and negative selft talk that I used to again the energy behind the behavior that's problematic I go I've been in La now for 10 days I go to Austin for two days and I come home I've not hit those five meals with my wife and kids the last two weeks okay that's okay I just don't want that to become a habit and before you know it it's two months of do was two weeks I'll make sure I spend a lot of time with them when I get back it's a very

very simple exercise that I challenge anyone listening to do and implement it will change how you feel about your life if that's too complicated for someone let's make it really really simple so I do a few small things every morning rich and again this is another one of the exercises that I write about and make change at lasts I ask myself three questions every morning with my morning coffee one of them I think really applies to this idea that we're reliant on being busy overly busy and it's really the anti- business question I ask myself

each morning what is the most important thing I have to do today and it's such a beautiful question Rich do you actually do that every morning I do it I can tell you what I put down today if you want what did you put down today I I genuinely hand on heart I put down um the most important thing I have to do today is to show up fully present for coming on Rich's show and the reason I put that down is because you know I've been a fan of your show for many years okay

so for me I love the way you conduct your conversations I love the Integrity of your show and for me I'm like yes I've done a lot of interviews this week but I really want to come up and deliver value and show up and be present for my interaction with you so that's what I put down today today the reason why it's such a good question and again if anyone's skeptical I say try it try it for seven days if you don't believe me I don't want you to believe me I don't you to be

overly reliant on my expertise I want people to be rying on themselves a bit more do it for seven days and see if your life doesn't change I know it will because whenever I talk to people about this and they do it they say wow it helps me frame my life differently there was a bit of I think skepticism in your question do you really do it every day I actually do rich I really really do and when you first start doing it usually go well there's not just one important thing right I got loads

of important things I have to do there's work stuff there's family stuff I don't know if you know this or not rich but when the word priority came into the English language I learned this from Greg McAn when it came into the English language in the 1500s the word priority only existed in its singular form you couldn't have priorities right you couldn't have multiple priorities it was only you could only have one thing so this forces me to choose now initially if people are struggling I say okay put one thing that's important down in your

work life and one thing in your personal life but over time it becomes one thing and it the power is that it forces you to make a decision so in a world where our to-do list will never ever be done it doesn't matter you put this one thing down and you make sure you do it if if you specify the most important thing each day and you do it your life will start to change after seven days you will have done seven things that you have identified as important and a bit like a practice of

gratitude you're sort of putting your attention there saying I said it was important I did it I'm someone who shows up each day for myself and so the week before I came to LA right it was quite a busy week because I knew I was going to be away for a couple of weeks doing my interviews so I was trying to get stuff done and so I I think on the Monday of that week it was a work task you know I've got to get this article back to my Publishers today that was the most

important thing it doesn't mean that my relationship with my wife wasn't important or my kids wasn't important it just meant on that day that was my key Focus if I did that that was a win that day on day two on Tuesday I think it was something like oh I'm not going to see my wife for a couple of weeks she was away at the weekend I must make sure when the children are in bed tonight that we spend some quality time together doesn't mean my work in the day wasn't important it just meant that

was the focus I must make sure I do that on the Wednesday I remember I was working from home and what I put down in my journal that morning was when my children walk through the door at just after 4: when they come back from school make sure ronga that your laptop is shut your phone is in another room so that you're fully present to listen to what they have to tell you these things sound so simple rich they are simple and they're really really powerful one thing I believe about myself and again I don't

know if I would have said this a few years ago because I would have been scared as to what people would think of me saying something like this but I as per chapter 3 I'm less reliant on being light these days I don't need to be light I know my responsibility to myself is to be authentic and to talk honestly and only I know why I'm saying something so what I what I was going to say is one thing I know I'm good at is connecting with people and helping them make changes in their lives

I've done that with my patients for years I've had I think very good relationships with my patients doctors used to say to me all the time when I was because I i' I've created a course called prescribing lifestyle medicine with the Royal College of GPS in London where I and a colleague train doctors into all these things that I talk about because we're not talk about them at medical school and a lot of them say do Chachi yeah you know we can give patients advice but none of them do what we tell them to do

and even the way that they're phrasing that question tells me all I need to know right I have never ever Rich told a patient what to do and I again I write about this in a section in this book I say I've never told a patient to give up that they must give up smoking if a patient comes in to see me and if they ask for my opinion okay so I try no longer in my life to give unsolicited advice if they ask for my opinion I feel my responsibility is to tell them the

impact that smoking is having on their lives so I will if at the end of that conversation if I am confident that that patient has understood and retained what I had to share with them and if they then say hey Dr chasi listen I hear what you're saying I understand that smoking is wrecking my lungs and is causing my we and whatever it might be but I get so much enjoyment out of smoking that I'm prepared to put it with the consequences I've never argued with him I said okay fine and the funny thing is

rich is what I've learned through that process is a lot of the time those same patients come back two or three months later saying hey Doc you know you know what I said um I don't want to give up smoking I've actually been thinking about it I think I do now nobody wants to be told what to do by someone else kids don't want to be patients don't want to be and that goes back to how we started this conversation it has to come from you right you have to become the master you have to

become the expert so this question what is the most important thing I have to do each day I think it's a game-changing question because it forces you to make a decision and it's it's it's one of the most important things I ask myself every single day does that make sense yeah I mean I think what you're doing is you're taking the abst exaction of that pallative care lesson that you know a lot of us have heard like we know these things but we're not really wired to bring it into our present experience it's sort of

like okay well that's on my mind I know I need to do those things and you know when this happens then I will do that and you're rooting it in the daytoday to make sure that it is you know a like a priority that gets nurtured in the daily actions that you undertake I think one of the reasons why I actually do do these things is because of my experience with my dad right my dad came to the UK in 1962 he was an Indian immigrant he came to the UK when they were recruiting doctors

from India to fill in the gaps and he came like many immigrants in search of a better life right he didn't have any money he didn't have any contacts but he just worked and for 30 years my dad only slept for three nights a week I mean it's insane right I'm not exaggerating one iota right I'll explain what my dad did he was a consultant physician at Manchester War infirmary and we lived in a suburb of Manchester he'd drive through traffic about 45 minutes an hour to work in the morning he'd come back at about

6 6:15 maybe 6:30 I can still remember dad walked through the door mom had have dinner ready for him in the kitchen he'd have dinner he'd go upstairs into the main bathroom he'd shave because I'd often go there and stand with Dad and chat to him he'd shave and then a car would pick him up at 700 p.m. he'd go out all night doing GP house calls he'd come back at 7:00 a.m. again mom would give him breakfast he'd go up and shave and then he'd drive into Manchester right he did that for 30 years

he'd do like multiple days in a row without sleeping how is that possible I don't know if my dad was alive now I'd love to know but that was my Dad's life for 30 years right so dad had all these plans for retirement that you know when I retire I'm going to see the world with your mom I'm going to go and set up a Street clinic for uh kids in Kolkata which is where my family from in India but he got sick at 57 he had to retire with ill health at at 57 he

got the autoimmune disease lupus he lost the sight in one of his eyes he was on kidney dialysis for 15 years one of the reasons I moved back from Edinburgh where I finished medical school and was working I moved back to the northwest of England where I live today is to help my mom and my brother look after my dad which we did for 15 years okay highly highly stressful time but that experience has had such a big impact on my life my dad's death in 2013 was probably the most traumatic thing that had ever

happened to me at that time time in my life right I never felt that death really applied to me until that happened and I would see my dad every day I Live 5 minutes away so it was a huge hole in my life and my dad's death was such a big Turning Point like it is for many people the parents when a parent dies but it forced me for the first time to stop looking out there for answers and to go inwards and I start to ask myself these questions you know whose life am I

leading is it is it my life or is it someone else's life and I really feel that dad's you know the way I feel today is I feel that dad's death was a gift actually like I love my dad to bits and I feel him around me more now than ever before even though it's what almost 12 years since he died a few months it'll be 12 years which it's it's nuts to say but we get to shape our own story about anything in life and I've chosen to see my dad's death as a gift

now because the most powerful lessons I've learned in my life have come from my dad's death about myself they've helped me become my own man and find out what is my journey what is my story and even what we're talking about these regrets of the dying that we think doesn't apply to us it's in the future and why this is why I would so hard to create these practical exercises to bring it into the present for people you know I take four to six weeks off Rich every single summer mhm right I've done it for

three years now now I want to acknowledge my privilege in being able to do that right my dad certainly I don't think could have done that many families cannot do that I accept that but a few years ago I realized well I don't have a boss anymore it's kind of up to me when I work and I realized through the lens of my Dad's life dad was always working we didn't see him that much growing up right because he was trying to provide for us and he provided amazingly for us he gave me and my

brother a Stella first class education but I'm like he went through those sacrifices and M for that matter the tragedy would be is if I don't learn from them right if I repeat the same behavior and I I have had Tendencies of overworking for sure so this whole process that I write about in this book that I'm so passionate about is once you start going inwards and start understanding your inner world you will start to make positive changes by asking myself each day what is the most important thing I have to do each day by

regularly doing that write your own happy ending exercise and reminding myself that people on their deathbed say I wish I'd spent more time with my friends and family I wish I'd work less I recognize my privilege at the same time Rich many people who can do what I do don't I've comes to the belief that the biggest disease in society is not the disease I can diagnose you in my clinic it's the disease of more more money more down loads more followers more holiday whatever it might be that that's somehow going to fix the hole

that exists inside us it isn't I've tried that game many people try that game so I know that these exercises help me make that big decision I didn't just suddenly wake up and go I'm going to take four weeks off the summer no I had to do these exercises I had to remind myself small changes and then I got to a point where I thought why not I could just stopped the podcast for 6 weeks I could to stop and I delete all my social media RS and I see the world with my wife and

kids and I tell you it is the most incredible experience of the year we connect we Bond we go on adventures together it would never have happened if I just S I didn't wake up one day I had to take small steps and reorientate myself about what's important and the rich you might resonate with this I'd love to know your view on this someone in the podcast world I can't remember who it was I said wrong listen this is a bad move for your show I said tell me more and I said listen you've got

a slot in your listeners weekly routine but I release on Wednesdays every week right people go and walks on Wednesday morning or Wednesday evening and you're the soundtrack to their walks if you stop releasing for 6 weeks you're allowing a different podcast to take that slot right I don't know if you've heard this advice before but that's certainly what someone in the industry told me and I thought about it I thought I actually don't care because what I'm going to gain is so much more than what I will potentially lose and when bronnie wear this

nurse came on my show two years ago we had this beautiful conversation this came up I remember saying to bronnie I never really said this publicly before but I said to her Bonnie I've had to really think about this if it's really true that I do this podcast to help people and it's not about my ego then why does it matter if people find a better show for them in the summer isn't that a good thing if they find a host that they prefer to me and a show that they prefer to me it doesn't

actually matter now genuinely that's how I feel I've changed the way that I view the worlds I understand that life is a set of experiences and it's the story we put onto each of those experiences that determine the quality of Our Lives my conversation with the AL Survivor Edith egoer really taught me that on such a profound level that it's never ever left me that I get to shape the narrative on every single event in my life this idea that you've spoken about before that I've spoken about before that most events in life are neutral

it's the perspective that we choose and I use those words intentionally that we choose to take on them the ultimately determine their outcome and I think one of the reasons that we can't make change that lasts is because we're not aware of our inner world we don't understand that we're constantly generating emotional stress by the way we interact with the world right so for example I've experienced the infamous LA traffic this week that I've heard you talk about so many times on this show right and you see people reacting and getting head up in their

cars around this traffic now I don't live here right so I get it must be frustrating but the reality is if you're driving and you're running late and someone cuts you up and you decide to go on a mental and a verbal Outburst on them in your car stupid driver they shouldn't have a license what are they doing you know someone should give them an ey check you know whatever it might be I've been that person before right so I'm not judging but people don't realize that they you don't have to react like that that

is a learned behavior and when you react like that it's a Reliance on an externality and the problem is and this is one of the key secrets to behavior change of people the emotional stress that you generate by the way you interact with that driver is the reason you're consuming too much sugar and alcohol because that emotional stress that you have just generated it's not neutral you will have to neutralize it in some way you might go to the gym you might go for a run or more commonly you'll get to the office you'll moan

to your colleagues about that stupid driver you'll go to the vending machine you'll have some sugar you'll have chocolate you'll need an extra glass of wine when you get home from work without realizing that you generated that emotional stress by the way you interacted with that situation and there's lots of tools in the book on helping people understand that you can change the way you interact with that situation you absolutely can and if you think that you can't let me share this with you as we record this which I'm coming at to the 500th episode

of my show right and people like I'm sure they did to you ask you what is the most impactful conversation you've ever had and the truth is I don't know right many of them have impacted me and transformed the way I I view the world but if I had to choose the one conversation that never leaves me is the conversation I had with a 93-year-old lady called Edith eager when she was 16 years old growing up in Eastern Europe she was in her house with her sister and her two parents she had a date with

her boyfriend that night and she was thinking about what dress am I going to wear her family suddenly get a knock on the door her whole family get put on a train and get taken to ast's concentration camp when she gets there within 2 hours both of her parents are murdered the same day maybe one or two hours later the senior prison guards ask her to dance for them these senior male prison guards because she is a 16-year- old dancer she has to dance for them after her parents have been murdered there are things from

that conversation that have never left me Rich the first thing she said to me that I always think about is this she said rongan I never ever forgot the last thing my mother said to me which was Edith nobody can ever take from you the contents that you put inside your own mind so she says to me Rich when I was dancing in alwiz I wasn't dancing in alitz in my mind I was in Budapest opera house I had a beautiful dress on there was an orchestra playing there was a full house it was amazing

I thought okay this is pretty incredible you're in hell literally you're in hell and you've reframed your experience then she tells me whilst I was in awit I started to see the prison guards as the prisoners they weren't free in their mind in my mind I was free they weren't living there their lives right which is pretty remarkable given what she was seeing and experiencing dayto day and then her final words to me Rich which which I honestly feel have have become tattooed into my soul and they have probably one of the reasons why I

feel so happy these days is she said to me rongan I have lived in aitz and I can tell you the greatest prison you will ever live inside is the prison you create inside your own mind and it just landed it just landed in my head I thought oh wow that's what we all do each day we're creating these stories inside our mind about the way the world is about what the people are doing to us and then we generate this emotional tension inside us that we then need to soothe with our behaviors we don't

realize that we have the power to change those stories and so I did a practice for years which frankly I no longer need to do like a lot of these changes you need to do them intentionally and consciously initially and then they become automatic in your default Behavior so I we do this practice again I hope by sharing it someone's going to take me up on this and do this to improve their own life every evening once my children were in bed I'd sit down and think about when did I get emotionally triggered in the

day okay because it's easy to think when we get emotionally triggered that it's down to that other thing that comment we got the way that person spoke to me the driver who come me of course I'm entitled to feel like stressed and wound up because that person shouldn't have done that Hey listen you can choose to live your life in whichever way you want just know that there's a consequence to having that sort of relationship with the world I would reframe these incidents and go oh why has that comment bothered me so much why has

that action by my colleague bothered me so much why has that email triggered me so much what is it within me that has been triggered it's about taking responsibility that our feelings and our emotions they're coming from us nothing out there is inherently offensive if that thing was offensive all of us would feel offended to the same thing but we don't because we are being triggered by something in that comment and once you understand that once you've built that gap between stimulus and response once you even know like with that 3F exercise oh that there

is a space between stimulus and response then you can start to change it so over over the years I would reframe and go oh that's cuz my mom used to say that to me oh that's because I'm actually quite insecure like one I've realized with having a large social media presence like you rich over the years no matter how much good we're doing in the world we'll always have naysayers or people not liking our style or what we do and so you'll get critical comments and people you say oh you need to grow a thick

skin if you if you're a public figure I don't agree I don't think it's a thick skin you need to grow you need to understand your relationship with criticism but I think you can move to a point where actually you have quite a healthy relationship with it in the sense that I've now comes to the conclusion that criticism only bothers us to the extent we believe it about ourselves well the criticism that bites it it bites because there's some truth in there that insites you and so you know your point being that and it's true

like what triggers you that that's the juice like you need to go towards that and you need that's not only need that's that's your your opportunity for discovery where Edith help me because it's easy to get caught up in our own lives right so if I'm in my life and I cannot reframe an event and I'm trying to convince myself that the way I feel is down to the other person I'm struggling to reframe what I would do I would go hey rongan you know what Edith could reframe events in alwiz you and your pretty

comfortable life here can probably reframe there so I've taken her story as inspiration now listen when the student is ready the teacher appears right for whatever reason I was ready for that message then and there have been significant things in my life that had changed how I view the world but understanding deeply that I create the story on every single thing in my life has changed me it's completely changed me I don't get triggered anywhere near to the same degree if I do it's usually because I'm overworked or underslept and I'm saying this to you

I've come to America maybe two weeks after this election right and looking on the outside it looks like you know so divisive when I spoke to vivec Mery the uh the current Surgeon General 6 months ago when he was in London he shared with me back then that one in six Americans are not talking to another family member because of a difference in political views I shter to think what it might be at the moment and I'm not trying to get into the ins and outs of policies that's not my bag what my bag is

is health happiness living meaningful lives and the relevance of what Edith has experienced in alitz is that that's relevant to each and every single one of us we create the narrative another phrase Rich that has really helped me and I'm sharing it in the hope that it's going to help somebody else who's listening the phrase I think about a lot is if I was that other person I'd be behaving in exactly the same way as them sure I know it sounds every man is right from his own perspective and every Behavior demonstrated by every human

being is a product of everything that proceeded it yeah but when you but why it's so important people go what are you saying that that behavior is acceptable no I'm not what I'm saying is if you start to judge other people's behaviors before you start before you try and understand them we're never going to make change in the world we're always going to have you know black and white coming up against each other you were probably the first person to have John makoy on your podcast right mhm I had him on pretty soon after that

in the UK and I remember John came to my house and I think in that first conversation we went for 2 hours and 40 minutes and I was just Spellbound the entire time it was like a Hollywood Story for people who don't know John John at that time or previously was one of Britain's Most Wanted men having been locked up as an armed criminal with two life sentences I remember after hearing John's story he left my house and I went into the kitchen and my wife ID was I said hey babe you know what if

I had John's upbringing I think I'd be in jail right now like I really had that oh my God I don't I I get it I get why you've ended up where you are now now he's turned his life around he's a free man he's the Lov man I would leave him home alone with my children like he's utterly amazing but these experiences like John mavo story has taught me that if I was that person I'd be doing the same as them Edith eager and asz has taught me you get to create The Narrative of

any story you want and if she can do it in there I can do it in my life these are the things that move the needle this is the reason Rich why habit change is not lasting even with the rules of you know the I'm saying make it easy stick it onto an existing uh behavior these are important and there's so many habit change books out there what I think make change that last does that I don't believe I've seen a book in this health and wellness and happiness Arena do before is really try and

go one step further and go what is Upstream from this how is it that we view the world and interact with the world that is making it inevitable that we're going to engage in problematic behaviors so I'm really really passionate about it because I've seen the changes with my patients and quite frankly I kind of feel it in myself like I don't find Behavior change hard anymore and I deeply deeply want to share these tools with people because I know that if you keep looking outside for answers you're going to struggle I I've heard that

some people in the US now are not having people over family members for Thanksgiving because they voted a different way from them now to me I'm not an American but I find that confusing I'm like this can only happen to me at least if you're stuck in your own stories right step outside understand why does your auntie think differently about the world to you you don't have to agree in fact in that chapter on taking less offense I say if you believe every single person in the world is going to agree with you on your

views it's quite an arrogant approach to take there's 8 billion people on the planet not everyone's going to think the same way as you I don't always agree with people but but by interacting with them with compassion first with why do they think like over the summer we had problems in the U in the UK right I was away in Kenya and my wife and I were starting to get text messages about some of these kind of um I w't call them riots but there was a bit of racial disturbance going on in the UK

and people were getting attacked right and I was like oh wow I'm like in another world in Kenya at the moment and I text my brother to say hey is there anything going on in our town where we live he said no there's nothing here but those incidents I love these kind of more extreme incidents in a way I don't love that they happen they really help me test out these views and go can you apply this even in an extreme situation and so I honestly would say if someone was being racist to me of

course if I was in in danger that would be different I would I would obviously take action to make myself safe but if I see a comment online that's maybe a bit racist or discriminatory my first approach now is not to judge it really isn't it used to be it's not to judge my first approach is why does this person think like that what has gone on in their life what have been the inputs into their brain what did their parents say were they bullied as a child you know what was The Toxic first workplace

they were in if I was them I would be thinking about the world in exactly the same way Rich this is the stuff that changes people we can tell people about exercise about food these things are important I've been teaching my patients those for years I've been doing them for years but when you get to this level and you start to alter how you think and and understand that actually you know what my behaviors are driven by my beliefs and my beliefs weren't with me when I came out of my mother's womb my beliefs have

been formed based upon my experiences just as I form these beliefs I can unform these beliefs if I want to if I spend a bit of time with myself each day listening to the signals tapping into my intuition that's the secret to behavior change that lasts in my view I think that's a good place to end it for today I think that's a a solid way to kind of deliver the message and kind of inspire people with some really actionable tools to carry into the new year so thank you appreciate you coming here today thanks

having me man yeah good luck with the book you did a great job man thanks very appreciate it yeah welcome here anytime and uh more to come from my favorite general practitioner thanks rongan thanks Rich cheers peace [Music] bless that's it for today thank you for listening I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation to learn more about today's guest including links and resources related to everything discussed today visit the episode page at Rich roll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive my books Finding Ultra voicing change in the plant power way as well as

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appreciate the love love the support see you back here soon peace plance namaste [Music]