BITESIZE | How to Make Change That Actually Lasts | Dr Rangan Chatterjee #618

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0:57If you want to start supporting your future self, Height is giving my listeners an exclusive 20 % off your first audit a thrive. Just go to height.com forward slash live more and use the code live more to get started. Welcome to feel better live more bite size your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 506 of the podcast, which was a solo episode which I recorded to celebrate the launch of my sixth book, Make Change That Lasts, Nine Simple Ways to Break Free from the Habits That Hold You Back. In this clip, I share a powerful idea that could help you make meaningful changes that actually last.

1:52Idea number one, trust yourself. What do I mean when I say trust yourself? Well, I think perhaps the most useful way to look at this is to examine the state of the world when it comes to health. We're living in a time where we've got access to more health information than ever before, more podcasts, more books, more Instagram posts, more online blogs. Yet despite this increase in information, our fiscal health is getting worse and our mental well-being is declining. And for the last few years, I've been thinking, what's going on? We've got more knowledge than ever before, yet worse health outcomes.

2:40So why is that? Well, of course, there are some external factors that we need to think about. The food environment, the pressures that many people are facing at work, the cost of living, etc. etc. I recognise that those things are real and that they're having a huge impact on our ability to make change. But it's not just that. There's also something internal going on within each and every single one of us that unless we address, the truth is we're never going to make changes that last in the long term and that's this idea that we all have an inner expertise within us over what is best for us but we've outsourced that inner expertise to external experts so people will say with all this health information out there it's important that you only listen to advice from experts but here's the problem with that.

3:41Let's take this podcast for example. I could talk to an expert, let's say Chris Palmer, this wonderful psychiatrist from Harvard who came onto this show a couple of years ago and showed that for some people with severe mental health problems, bipolar, schizophrenia for example, he has seen that a ketogenic diet can transform these people's lives and when he came on this podcast and in his book he shares published research to support what he is saying and clinical case studies right and then so I can talk to Chris on this podcast and try and tease out when that approach might be useful and for whom and then I can also talk to another expert let's say a few weeks later, let's say someone like Professor Felice Jacker, who published a randomized control trial a few years ago showing that a modified Mediterranean diet can put some cases of depression into remission.

4:45And if you look at what that diet was, it was full of whole grains, lean meat fatty fish lots of diversity nuts pulses legumes right so two experts that on the surface are saying two completely different things so what i would often get is messages emails or dms on instagram from people saying hey dr chanshi both experts sound really really good and convincing. I like them both, but I don't know which expert I should be trusting. I think the most useful question is not which expert should I trust. The more powerful question, the more useful question is why do I no longer trust myself? This, I think, is probably the most important thing for you to think about this year if you want to make transformative change.

5:46why do you no longer trust yourself? I contend that nobody knows what is better for you in the context of your life than you. Now, I'm not saying ignore external experts like me, not at all. I'm saying the balance has shifted too much, whereas now we forget, or so many of us forget about what we think and we're putting all our faith in that external expert. But here's the thing, no expert's advice is going to be right for every single person. And I include the advice that I give in that. Use the advice, but then pay attention to how that advice works for you. So through the lens of diet, for example, I would say to people, well if you think both of those experts sound credible you resonate with what they're saying and you're interested in trying well one approach might be to try one expert's diet for four weeks and whilst you're trying it pay attention pay attention to how you feel what's your energy like your vitality your sleep your focus you know how do you feel in yourself what is your bloating like your bowels your gut pay attention to those things observe them and then perhaps try the other person's diet for four weeks and pay attention to those same things and I contend that if you start paying attention you will very quickly realize which of these approaches might be the right approach for you at this particular moment in your life.

7:38Again I want to be really clear I'm not saying ignore external experts. I'm saying the balance has shifted too much. We want to balance between the two external expertise and internal expertise but too often now we're getting confused we say I don't know who I should be trusting all the information is conflicting but actually if you stop paying attention to how you feel when you're doing certain things and let's take this beyond diet if you listen to my podcast every week you'll be constantly hearing different ideas perspectives viewpoints practices and not all of them are going going to be right for you.

8:19But if you want to change your life for good, you have to become your own expert. And it is possible. If I reflect on the patients throughout my career who have truly transformed their lives for good, not just for a few weeks or a few months, for good, at some point, they became their own experts. At some point, they were able to say to me, hey doc look you recommended those five or six things I think those five work really well but that sixth thing that you recommended I don't think that's the right approach for me I don't think that's going to fit in my life when I do that it doesn't seem to work for me and it's that internal expertise that ability to trust ourselves that I think we need to take back it's the only way in my view that you're going to be able to navigate this world where you're being constantly bombarded by more and more information is by spending a bit of time developing and relearning the skill of listening to yourself.

9:26One of the problems when we don't do this, when we don't trust ourselves and put all of our faith in external experts, is that if the plan that the expert is offering us doesn't work, we never think the plan was wrong for us. We don't think the expert gave us the wrong advice, we think that we're the failure. We think that we're the ones who've got something wrong with us. The experts had the perfect advice, but we weren't able to follow it. And I would argue that sometimes if we follow the wrong plan for us, and then we end up thinking that we're the failure, we're worse off than had we never even started off that plan in the first place.

10:12That's a really key point. If you never followed that expert's plan and then not managed to do it and failed and then thought that you were the failure, in some ways you would have been better off not even following that plan in the first place. So what you have to do in my view, the more helpful way to look at these things is to go, no, I'm going to, let's say you like a certain plan that someone's offering you, give it a go. But pay attention. Ask yourself, is this working for me? How do I feel when I do this? Does this resonate deeply within me? Now, chapter one is called Trust Yourself. The whole of that chapter is dedicated to this concept.

10:56And in the chapter, I explain that our bodies are astonishingly deep sources of information. if only we learn to listen to them properly. One of the most exciting and rapidly growing new fields is the study of what's known as interoception. Interoception is literally a sixth sense, like sight, touch, taste, sound and smell. It's a basic power of detection that we're born with. But interoception doesn't interpret signals from the outside world. Instead, it's directed inward at the signals that are transmitted from our internal organs to our brains. And the better we get at listening to its messages, the better able we are to thrive.

11:46There's a lot of scientific research now that shows us that developing our sense of interoception can transform our well-being. There was a study published in The Lancet where they reported on research done by Professor Hugo Critchley at the Brighton and Sussex Medical School with autistic individuals who had symptoms of anxiety. And Professor Critchley was able to significantly reduce their stress levels by training them to become more aware of signals from their heartbeats. After just six sessions, 31 % of them recovered completely from their anxiety, compared to only 16 % in the control group.

12:30There was another study, Professor Cynthia Price at the University of Washington in Seattle has carried out equally impressive work with people who have substance abuse problems. Drug and alcohol addicts who relapse often struggle to regulate their emotions. Cynthia Price found that training patients to be more acutely aware of their internal sensations with sessions of mindfulness that were focused inward, lessen their cravings, reduce depression and help them remain abstinent over the course of a year. I mean that's remarkable, these improvements are there when we teach people to trust themselves, to pay attention to what's going on inside their own bodies.

13:19This is the theme that I'm trying to get across. there's nothing wrong with listening to advice from external experts but you've also got to tap into your own internal expertise in fact researchers believe that one of the reasons why physical exercise can be so powerful for so many different aspects of our health including anxiety and depression is because of increased interoceptive awareness by regularly increasing your heart rate and working out your muscles, you actually become more attuned to the signals your body is emitting, which in turn helps you feel more capable and in control. So this whole idea is about trusting yourself.

14:09I really think at this time of year, it's the most important thing you can be thinking about. Are you someone who needs to start tapping into their own internal expertise. Now the truth is, if you've spent your whole life not listening to your body's signals and instead listening to the advice from people outside of you, it's not going to happen overnight. It's a skill that you can develop and cultivate, but it's going to take practice. Think about this another way. If you wake up in the morning and the first thing you do is start consuming information, so the news, emails, social media, even if you're consuming high quality information, you're still getting information in from the outside, which means that you have potentially lost the opportunity to start listening to your body's own signals.

15:09how are you feeling? Are you overly stressed? Have you got some tightness somewhere? Is your mood slightly off? You see we don't realise that when we start consuming from the outside we're distracting, we're not having to sit with ourselves and if you cannot sit with yourself you're not going to learn about yourself which is one of the reasons why we keep jumping from plan to plan, from expert to expert wondering why can't I find the right approach for me? why does this expert's plan not work or this expert's plan not work? If you're someone who's constantly getting confused by the advice from other people, I would say that it's really, really important for you this year to focus on some solitude each day.

15:57If you've listened to this podcast before or read any of my previous books, you will know that I think in this day and age. One of the most important practices for any one of us is a daily practice of solitude. Why? Because this is how you develop the skill of learning about yourself. You sit with yourself. You step outside of your life so you can start reflecting on your life. But if you get up and straight away, you're consuming information, you've lost that opportunity. So the idea here is about trusting yourself and the practical take home is what daily practice of solitude can you bring into your life this year?

16:43Now, in keeping with the theme of this idea, you're going to have to find what works best for you. Yes, I have my own way of doing this. I have a morning routine of the three M's, mindfulness, movement, and mindset. I start off each day with about 10 minutes or so of meditation and breath work I then do some movement, a five minute strength workout while my coffee is brewing and then I finish up with that third M mindset where I write in my journal This is an intentional way of starting each day which works for me It means I'm not reacting to the world around me I'm actually intentionally setting the tone of how I want my day to go I'm learning about myself through that morning practice so I would say you have to figure out what is that daily practice of solitude going to be for you it could be journaling meditation breath work going for a walk whilst not also staring at your phone it could even be you have your morning cup of tea or coffee each morning in your kitchen or your living room in silence without also checking your emails or Instagram at the same time.

18:03That is solitude. That will allow things to come up for you that allow you to reflect on your life and make changes in your life. So I really want you to think this year about what daily practice of solitude can you bring in. You may already have one and maybe me sharing this idea will powerfully remind you why it's so important for you to keep that practice up. And whilst you can vary the practice from day to day, I think it's better to stick to the same one every day, ideally at the same time. I think when you do the same thing every morning, it becomes repetitive, but the magic lies in the repetition.

18:43When you repeat a practice over and over again, you quickly build up your innate intelligence and intuition. You start to learn what is normal for you and you start to learn when things start to feel different. So I have a friend, for example, who does five yoga postures every morning. It's the same five every day because on some days when she's doing those practices, they feel easy. She feels that they're fluid. she feels really flexible and on other days things feel a bit tight and rigid because she's doing the same practice every day when things feel different she knows it's not the practice because that's what's happening every day that's her constant she knows that there's something different within her so for example when she feels tight and rigid when she's doing it she knows that the stress load is building up in her life maybe there's a relationship issue she needs to address maybe she's taken on too much at work and she's stressed out and underslept it's a practice that helps her tune into herself so I'd highly encourage you this year to find your daily solitude practice that's going to work for you hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip.

20:07Do spread the love by sharing this episode with your friends and family. And if you want more, why not go back and listen to the original full conversation with my guest. If you enjoyed this episode, I think you will really enjoy my bite-sized Friday email. It's called the Friday Five. And each week I share things that I do not share on social media. It contains five short doses of positivity, articles or books that I'm reading, quotes that I'm thinking about, that's exciting research I've come across and so much more. I really think you're going to love it. The goal is for it to be a small yet powerful dose of feel good to get you ready for the weekend.

20:46You can sign up for it free of charge at drchatterjee.com forward slash Friday Five. I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Make sure you have pressed subscribe and I'll be back next week with my long-form conversational Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday.