Ep. 83 Why The First 5 Minutes Of Your Day Are The Most Important With Dr Rangan Chatterjee

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1:31Now, I think it probably goes without saying that Dr. Rangan Chatterjee has been on my dream guest list for this podcast for years. He is one of the most influential doctors in the UK, having practiced for over 20 years and dedicated his career to how we can improve our health and our happiness before we need to head to the doctor's surgery. He's the author of five Sunday Times bestselling books about happiness and productivity, and over a million people listen to his podcast every week. I'll be totally honest, going into this recording, my aim was to get as much actionable advice for you as possible.

2:02And he really was just full of wisdom. So make sure you listen right to the end so that you don't miss anything. I learnt a lot. And as always, please do like and subscribe or go ahead and rate the podcast. It really, really helps us be able to get incredible guests like Raman.

2:20Thank you so much for joining me. Grace, thank you for having me. I'm very excited to get into this conversation. you have been one of my top top wishlist guests to get on this podcast. I feel very flattered. I hope I don't disappoint. I'm sure you will not. And what we always do at the beginning of every episode is get a little bit of a rundown of your career, your background, so that we can know a little bit more about how you got to where you are today, but also the background that you come to today and your current point of view with. So could you give me a little whistle stop tour of your career?

2:53Okay, big picture. I am a qualified medical doctor, qualified for medical school in 2001. So I've been practicing and seeing patients for well over 20 years now. So I've seen tens of thousands of patients. I've always had a slight frustration within medicine if I look back, especially in the early years, because I felt a lot of the time we were just suppressing symptoms and not helping people get to the root cause of what was going on, I only realised that discontent with hindsight. So essentially a couple of things happened in my life, quite pivotal, which changed the way I practice medicine.

3:33One was my father, who was also a doctor. He fell ill back in 1998. So we had to medically retire. He had an also immune disease called lupus. He had chronic kidney failure. He was on dialysis for 15 years. And I moved back from University of Edinburgh to help my family look after my dad. So I was a pretty full-on carer for a number of years for dad until dad died in 2013. So that taught me a lot about what it's like to be on the other side, you know, not the doctor, but the patient's family and what it's like when you're not getting the medical care perhaps that you want or you've got questions.

4:12But also my son, when he was six months old back in 2010, he had a convulsion from which he nearly died. And it was a very, very scary time for my wife and I. We were on holiday in France when it happened. He nearly died from a fully preventable vitamin deficiency. That's a long story. But in essence, modern medicine saved his life, but then he was discharged. And there was no help given, there was no support given, there was nothing to explain, well, what are the implications of this? He basically had a severe vitamin D deficiency, and then the calcium levels in his blood had fallen. And essentially, I was consumed with guilt.

4:54I had perfectionist tendencies myself for much of my life, and I felt I'd let my son down. And I remember we were discharged from the hospital, all. And I made myself a vow that day that I'm going to get my son back to full health as if this had never happened. So I became obsessed. I would be reading every single day, every night about vitamin D, calcium, the gut microbiome. I'd go around the world, I'd attend conferences, and I basically learned that there's so much information out there that we don't learn at medical school that is highly relevant, not only for my son, but also my patients.

5:29So basically, what I learned in that journey to get my son better, and to be really clear, he's a happy, thriving 13-year-old boy today, okay? What I learned on that journey, I applied with myself, I applied with my family, and then I applied with my patients. And what I learned is that I started to use less medication than I'd ever had to use in the past, and I was getting patients much, much better. And so for me, it was really quite transformative. It was about how do you get to the root cause of a patient's problem rather than simply suppress their symptoms with medication. Please, I don't want anyone to misunderstand and say I'm anti-medication.

6:10I'm not. But I do think we overuse medication. And I think there's many reasons for that. So essentially, as part of that journey in 2015, I created a Prime Time BBC One series called Doctor in the House, where I went and lived alongside families who had been unwell for years and who were already under GPs and specialists, but they couldn't get better. I recorded two seasons of that, 2015 and 2017, and I basically managed to help families in just six weeks either get significantly better or fully reverse their conditions, whether it be type 2 diabetes, panic attacks down by 70 % in just six weeks.

6:50I helped a lady who had fibromyalgia for 10 years become pain-free in six weeks. I helped another lady who had really bad hormonal symptoms, menopausal symptoms that were scoring 15 out of 17 on the British Menopausal Society Symptom Questionnaire. And in just six weeks, without using hormones, and I'm not against the use of hormones, but with this lady, without using hormones, by helping her make changes to her lifestyle and the way she perceives stress, we got our symptoms down to only scoring two out of 17. At that point, the biggest achievement of my career, no question, was to show this to 5 million people each week on BBC One, the power of lifestyle change if you know what you're doing.

7:35And that journey has led to me writing five books. I've been hosting my own podcast for the last six years, which I'm very fortunate is the most listened to health podcast in Europe now. and I just love what I get to do these days which is help inspire people help to empower people and basically say listen good health is not as hard as you think it is we've massively over complicated it and my goal with everything I do in public is to help simplify it I mean that's incredible first of all I think that it's a hugely important topic to talk about I think that as you you know say rightly disclaimed by not wanting to talk down on medicine however I do completely see how that we had a physiologist on the podcast a while ago right back at the beginning who talked really interestingly about the NHS in the way that it's obviously set up to fix things that are wrong rather than to make anything that's like okay get to great which has really stuck with me.

8:38It's always stuck with me about the fact that, you know, we do have this mentality of kind of fixing, but we don't have this mentality of kind of prevention anywhere within our healthcare service. And obviously part of that is because we have a fantastic free healthcare service that is, you know, hugely beneficial to a lot of people and it can't do everything. However, you know, I, I mean, I've always been so surprised at the amount of times I've gone to the GP and been prescribed antibiotics just as like an instant, this will probably make you better. When, you know, at the same time, my fiance, when he had sepsis, antibiotics saved his life.

9:15And had he been, had too many antibiotics before that point, they could have not worked. I think it's always, I think about it a lot. It takes up a lot of headspace, that kind of prevention versus cure in the UK Health Service, whilst also, you know, obviously wanting to sing the praises of all of this modern medicine that does save lives. I would love to know from you, with all of this in mind, what you think the one thing in terms of this kind of prevention that people can make sure they're doing in order to kind of drastically improve their health overall? There's a couple of ways of answering that.

9:54Just to quickly touch on what you just said, Grace, the NHS is a disease management system. It's not a creation of health system. I didn't realise that when I qualified. That's not necessarily a criticism. That's just the way it is, right? The NHS was set up a long time ago. And back in that era, most of what doctors saw were what we call acute problems, right? You mentioned your fiancé had sepsis. That's an acute problem. That's a problem which needs a doctor and we need often modern medicine to come in and save someone. The bulk of what people are going in to see doctors or other healthcare professionals within the NHS today are chronic conditions that are largely driven by our collective modern lifestyles.

10:46Now, one needs to be very careful how I say that. I'm not putting blame on people. Modern life is tough. it's really stressful. People are feeling frantic. They're burning out, right? They don't feel they've got enough time to do the things that they want to do for their relationships, for their health, for their happiness. But we have to understand that the way we're living collectively is making us sick. And doctors really aren't trained on how to create health. We're trained on how to diagnose disease and treat it. And it's two very different things. So that's the first thing today. The second thing, which is a really important point, it's not just prevention.

11:23You can also use personalized lifestyle change to help treat things when you've got them. You know, I teach doctors and it's something I always try and get across to them is, yes, prevention is important, clearly, and we don't do enough on prevention. But also when you've already got a condition, let's say on Doctor in the House, I helped a lady put her type 2 diabetes into remission in 30 days, basically reverse the condition in 30 days. At that point in 2015, that had never been done before on television anywhere in the world, right? The amount of pushback I got then on social media was insane, given how I'd helped that lady transform her life and feel better than she'd felt in years.

12:04Fast forward today, 2024, so nine years on, it's now well established in the medical literature that you can put type 2 diabetes into remission. We can even read code that in your medical notes. So back then that was really controversial. Now it's established as mainstream. So it's just two things I think for people to reflect on when we're thinking about our health. In answer to your question, what's the one thing people can do? It would be easy to talk about diet or exercise or sleep. And I'm super passionate about those things, but that's not what I'm going to say. We are living such busy lives these days.

12:41So many of us wake up, the first thing we do is look at our phone and we react to the world. We react to Instagram posts, to social media, to negative news headlines, whatever it might be. And we've lost the opportunity to tune into ourselves. I'm just in the process of finishing my next book at the moment. And one of the key ideas for people is that knowledge is not enough. What do I mean by that? We can all know the right things to do, but it doesn't mean we're going to do them. Right, pretty much everyone listening to your podcast right now, Grace, knows that too much sugar is probably not helping them, yet many people are still doing that.

13:15We know that actually staying up till midnight to binge watch on Netflix is probably not helping us, but we still do it. So knowledge, I don't think is enough. So going back to what I think is the one habit or behavior we should be doing every day, is that we need a daily practice of solitude, a practice where we're not getting inputs in from the external world and we're allowing ourselves to listen to what's going on inside us. Now, yes, I happen to do that with journaling. Okay. I love to journal in the morning. Well, let's do quite a few things in the morning actually, but one of them is journaling because it helps me to reflect on my life.

13:54It allows me to step outside of my life so I can reflect and go, you know, how am I living at the moment? You know, am I taking enough time for myself? Am I spending enough time with my wife and my kids? Is work getting too much? And so I don't mind how people do their daily solitude. I think there's a number of ways, meditation, mindfulness, journaling, or it could simply be you have your morning cup of coffee in silence, right? Without scrolling Instagram, without looking at the news. And I honestly believe that that is a root cause behavior. If you start taking five or 10 minutes a day to tune into yourself, you will start to make better decisions in every single aspect of your life, health, happiness, and relationships.

14:40So I want to jump on that, because I think that, I mean, there's definitely this huge trend on social media about talking about morning routines, talking about what people do. It seems to be one of these two sides, either like self-care morning routine or this productivity morning routine rather than a kind of amalgamation of both and understanding that you probably need both to have successful life as a whole. As part of this morning routine, what should people be doing to optimize their physical and mental health? The first thing to say about morning routines is that for some people, they've become a bit cliched, right?

15:17It's the sort of the successful CEO in New York who gets up at 4.30am to cold plunge and do whatever, you know, they win the day before everyone else has got up, right? I get that and I get the skepticism there. But I think people need to understand they already have a morning routine, they just may not be conscious of it. Your morning routine could be you press the snooze button. And for the third time, you pick it up and you spend 10 minutes in bed scrolling Instagram, looking at the news, getting yourself in a bad mood before you've even got out. I didn't know there was CCTV in my room. That's so strange.

15:55Yeah. Well, the thing is, that's a routine, right? That is a routine. And it's not about good or bad. It's about understanding that every action we do has a consequence. So people are entitled to start their day like that, but it's unlikely to set them up for the most intentional and purposeful day. It could do, you know, we're all different. We all respond to these things differently, but it's unlikely. So I personally do have quite a specific morning routine that I've been working on for years. Now at this stage in my life, it happens to be between 30 and 45 minutes. Now I fully appreciate that some people will go, it's ridiculous.

16:33I don't have time for that. I'm going to explain that in just a minute. So it didn't used to be 30 to 45 minutes, you know, five, six years ago, it was 10 minutes, but it made a massive difference for me. So in terms of a practical recommendation for people, I taught to my patients about something called the three Ms, mindfulness, movement, and mindset. Now, I think it's a really great framework to think about the kind of things you could be doing first thing in the morning to get you set up for the day, whether it's about your health or it's about productivity. So how does that look, you know, for any individual?

17:10Okay, mindfulness, some form of mindfulness practice that could be meditation, it could be breath work, it could be, you know, a body scan, anything that you're drawn to. It could be going on a meditation app like Calm or Headspace or whatever, just a small practice and mindfulness. Then it can move on to the second thing, which is movement. So some form of movement. And the third part of it would be mindset. So something to get your mind in the right place for your day. So what I do is I do 10 minutes of meditation when I wake up first thing. So I live in a house, I go downstairs, I'm in my pajamas, I do 10 minutes of meditation.

17:52I used to use apps, I don't anymore. Like they were really good to help educate me on how you meditate, but now I prefer to not have technology when I'm meditating. It's only 10 minutes. Second thing I do is I go into my kitchen and I love to drink coffee. So I'm very particular about my coffee. I weigh out my coffee. I put it in the French press and I put a timer on for five minutes. In those five minutes, I do a five minute strength workout. Okay. So I'm in my pajamas. I've not had to put my latest sports gear on or my trainers. I literally, while my coffee is brewing, I do a five-minute workout.

18:30It could be press-ups. I might pick up a kettlebell that I've got in the kitchen, but I make it really, really simple. And then the third M is mindset. So after my little workout, I've got my nice cup of coffee exactly the way I like it. And these days I journal. So I'll literally write in my journal. I answer some questions each morning, three particular questions that I ask myself every morning, and I think about the answers and I write them down. That's my morning routine. Okay, now if I've got a bit extra time, I'll then read something uplifting for 10-15 minutes before my wife and kids wake up.

19:07Okay, that's what works for me at this point in my life. Now if anyone's pushing back and going, okay, all right for you mate, but I don't have that sort of time. Because patients have said that to me before. Well, there's a patient who, how old was she? She's probably about 44. This is a few years ago, who was a single parent. She had, I think, two or three kids from recollection. And she was really struggling with a skin complaint that was diagnosed as eczema. And I strongly felt that chronic stress in her life was making her eczema worse. And I talked to her about morning routine. She said, Doc, I don't have time for that.

19:44I said, okay, all right, let's think about this. I think this 3M routine would really suit you. Let's figure out a way to do it in five minutes. I said, do you have five minutes? She goes, yeah, I've got five minutes. I said, okay, great. So I said, okay, I've got a breath that I teach my patients called the 3-4-5 breath, where you breathe in for three, you hold for four, and you breathe out for five. And I've taught so many patients how to use it, especially people who suffer with anxiety. It can be really, really helpful. So she would do one minute of three, four, five breathing. That's it. One minute.

20:18Okay. Then in terms of her movement, she really liked yoga. I said, okay, let's find some of your favorite yoga moves. I want you to do them for two minutes. That's it. Not like a 20 minute practice, two minutes. So she found two or three moves that she liked that she'd done years ago in yoga classes. And she, she created a little sequence. So she did two minutes of yoga. Then I said, for the third M mindset, I gave her some options and she said, okay, I actually want to do affirmations. So she would write down, or I think she would just say them, I'm happy, I'm calm, I'm stress-free. I'm happy, I'm calm, I'm stress-free.

20:54Her morning routine took her five minutes, right? She told me she had no time. Within days, she felt like a different person. She felt calmer. She had more energy. It kicked into effect what I call the ripple effect. So at lunchtimes now, she would start to go for a 10-minute walk around the block, stuff that she wouldn't do before. But that morning routine kick-started things off for her, helped to build momentum. And then incredibly, within three or four weeks, her symptoms of eczema had gone down by 50 to 60%, right? Hadn't gone away, but it was a lot more manageable. The reason I share that, Grace, is because I believe morning routines are important.

21:36you don't need to get sucked into the two-hour routine the new york ceo does if you can do that great but i appreciate most people can't even five minutes of intentional time each morning with your cup of tea maybe journaling whilst you have a cup of tea answering some important questions i think that will transform people's lives and i've seen it it's done it for me and it's done it for thousands of my patients it's so interesting because i always have this internal battle with myself about the fact that I know I will feel better if I spend some time in the morning, not just getting up as close as possible to the time I need to leave, rushing through everything and then leaving.

22:15I know, like I know that will make me feel better. But at the same time, I want to get as much sleep as possible. And so I have this constant push and pull between me being like, okay, well, I can get ready in half an hour and out the door within half an hour. and I constantly push it closer and closer to that rather than the actual understanding that every time I have jet lag and it wakes me up a few hours before I would need to get up, I am so much calmer. I have a better approach to everything. I feel more in control. It's this kind of cognitive dissonance. That's really interesting. I mean, you've shared some of it at the end there.

22:53I was going to ask you, why is it you feel you should get up earlier? What is it you think you'll gain? because the reality is if our lives are going well, we don't need to change anything, right? We don't need to just put in a routine for no reason. If someone listening to this is already happy with their life and says, yeah, everything's rocking. Health, my relationships, my work, I've got no issues. Great. You don't need to do, you know, don't change anything. You're smashing it already. But you've just said that on, funnily enough, when you're jet lagged, so you're sort of, you're made to get up early.

23:29You don't want to, but you're made to get up early. You find that calmness, that sense of control. That's why I have a morning routine. Ever since I had children, my oldest is 13, now my daughter's 11, I've realized that I'm a better human being in every aspect of my life when I've had time to myself each morning. I'm calmer. I'm more present with my kids. I'm more present with my wife. I'm a better doctor. So I've now learnt enough times I've assessed myself when I don't have a morning routine and when I do. And I think, I actually prefer the wrong one who has half an hour to himself each morning, but I appreciate not everyone does.

24:09And so let me ask you this then, Grace, given that you know you're going to be calmer and more in control if you did get up, let's say, half an hour earlier why don't you sleep really like sleep I agree that there must be something there in order to mean that I continuously don't do that because I am the type of person who will I intend to optimize my life in every way like I'm pretty shameless about the fact that I'm happy to you know I currently live a very selfish life that I would never be able to live once I have kids and I, you know, it is entirely based on how I work best and how I can get the absolute most out of myself.

24:50It's interesting because I wonder if it's different weightings in my mind in terms of what I find productive, because interestingly, I know I'm a far better manager, far better person to work with, et cetera, et cetera, when I give myself a few hours to, not to myself in terms of mindset, but to work. So interestingly, actually, if I have a really busy day, I will get in hours earlier, not to get more done, but because it gives me back control. It gives me back control of the fact that, okay, well, that meeting starts at nine. So that means that if I come in at 8.45, I'm going to be like going hell for leather through the day without actually being able to regather it.

25:28So I wonder if it's that I value that higher because I value productivity and work higher than maybe my own mindset, which is problematic. well I don't know if it is I mean as you say you seem to have the awareness to go if you at some point choose to have kids in the future which of course many people choose not to or and of course some people are unable to despite wanting to you have the self-awareness to know wow it may change at that point and you know I've been a dad for many years now you know my life and what I'm able to do has changed significantly for the better since I've had kids but then we have to make choices.

26:04Perhaps, and of course I don't know your life, but perhaps you can get away without a morning routine because you have other, maybe there's space in your life at other times to decompress. You mentioned the word control. That's a really important word. We know from the research that people who have a sense of control over their lives are healthier, their mental resilience is better they're happier they do better at work they earn more money they have better social relationships and I kind of feel today more than ever with so much negativity going on in the world if you go online and look at the news and that sort of stuff right you may well feel pretty bad about the state of the world you feel out of control and what we all really need to do each day if we want to lead that intentional and purposeful life we need to give ourselves a sense of control in a world that is fundamentally uncontrollable that's why i think routines are so important because they give you that sense of control the market's uncertain revenues tied and hiring on hold that's why results driven companies are using upwork to Keep work moving.

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28:39I also think further to that, of course, like the world is out of your control, which can make you, you know, if that's a lot of your consumption, then it's not just what we're consuming in terms of food etc etc if you're constantly consuming this kind of 24-hour media cycle where things are pretty intense all the time you can find something that's going to make you feel terrible at any one time don't get me wrong we all should obviously know and care about a lot of things but there is definitely a certain impact that has in terms of you falling out of control over your life and your mindset but I think further to that there's this element of the way that social media gains our concentration now so for example TikTok that I don't think we have the ability to be in control of you find yourself say you're scrolling with the best intentions this kind of like lab rat dopamine hit behavior where you're constantly being brought back and back and back and kind of over and over and over having these artificial dopamine hits we don't have the equipment to always gain back control and say no I've done 10 minutes now I'm gonna stop or whatever it might be it's almost like a drug and I know that sounds so dramatic but that's genuine that's why I don't let myself scroll TikTok during the week because I have no control over it more so than if I like drink a glass of alcohol I'm likely to stop TikTok And it's not a personal failing of yours.

30:07None of us can resist. These things are engineered for the weak spots in our psychology. There's a thing on social media that's called perfectionist presentation. So with the best will in the world, most people share the highlights of their life. They don't tend to share the plates that are piling up in the sink or the dirty laundry. you know and it's not because they're being dishonest they're just why would you share that right you can know with your rational brain that i'm seeing the highlight reel of someone's life but your subconscious brain doesn't know that right your subconscious picks up the idea constantly when you're scrolling that other people have got a better life than me and it ain't real and i've realized you know i'm at a different stage in life to you in terms of age and maybe where i'm at with my family, for example.

31:00But I've just realized the more time I spend on social media, the less happy I am with my life, right? It's simple. So for the last four weeks, I'm trying something new. This might seem quite revolutionary to some people, but I'm switching my phone off, my smartphone at 6.30pm. Stop. Yeah, I'm switching off. Now, let me be really clear here. I do happen to have a landline as well, right? So I appreciate some people don't. And why have I kept a landline? Because I, for me, being able to separate all the noise on my phone, yet still being available for the people who need me. Like I helped to care for my elderly mum who lives five minutes away, right?

31:46My brother lives nearby, all kinds of, you know, they've all got my landline number, but only my close family and my really good friends have my landline number right no work contact has my landline number so it means if the phone rings after 6 30 p.m it's someone actually it's not related to work and honestly it's changed my life do you know what's so funny is that i've been pitching over the past few weeks about how we should bring back the landline for precisely this reason. I find also very helpful to know if someone's home, generally when you need to reach someone. But actually, we have this, it's currently we have an option between like a barrage of information and contact and like social, but quite intense.

32:33Like you get it when you switch on your phone, whether you want to or not, whether it's BBC notifications, whether it's WhatsApps, whether it's social media. As we say, the temptation is there. We often don't have control over it. these things are engineered to get our attention. But even if you just want to respond to your friends, I find myself not responding to my friends for weeks. And I find myself scrolling every day. And that to me is very confusing, because I would actually like to be social with my friends and I don't care about what's on my feed. Whereas I genuinely believe that we should bring back landlines, because there's this idea that contact now with people is also associated with this constant cycle of the rest of it, the rest of the stuff that's on the feed, the rest of the news, the rest of all of that.

33:20And actually we need to be able to separate those as well because we need to be able to, as you say, contact and be in contact with people who need us without like I shut myself out from technically from all of my friends, despite the fact that I do see them, but I won't be responding purely because in the evenings I do not want a single other piece of information in my head. So there's this kind of, it's one or the other. It's this black and white decision. Yeah, it goes back to the question you asked me before, Grace, what's the most important habits? What's the most important behavior? I honestly believe in this crazy, busy, 21st century, you know, urban life that many of us live within.

34:01I'm not sure there's a greater practice for your physical health and mental well-being than daily these solitude. And if you don't take active steps to create space for it, it ain't going to happen. If I take my phone into my bedroom at night, right? And I'm human, right? Like I'm doing this at the moment as a trial. I like it, but it doesn't mean I'll never do that again. I can't resist looking at it in the morning. If it's in my bedroom, I cannot resist or wake up. It's your alarm clock. Yeah. I mean, you just can't, if it's there, we know from scientific research that even having your phone present, you're using cognitive willpower to not look at it, right?

34:42You're using up your cognitive reserve. And so that's why I'm always trying with patients and with myself looking for what's the one-time behavior? What's the root cause habit that if I can do that, it naturally causes all these other great behaviors to happen, right? Me putting my phone up at 6.30 at night and leaving it in my kitchen, the knock-on effects of that are huge, right? It means I'm not looking at nonsense every evening, right? I spend more intentional time with my wife once the kids have gone to bed. I'm reading in bed with a dim light. You know, it's much more relaxed. You're not just seeing a hundred posts a minute of nonsense half the time, right?

35:24You're nourishing yourself. I sleep better. I'm waking up feeling more refreshed. I'm waking up feeling calmer. Because the phone ain't there, I'm not naturally going onto Instagram and seeing what's going on in the world. And I'm as fallible as anyone else. If my phone was there, I would be. So for me, I've created something in my life, which means it's much easier for me to engage in behaviors I want to. Now, that may not work for everyone. Someone may go, I can't do that. I need to be in contact. My children need to get me or whatever it might be. Hey, I get it. we've all got to find what works for us.

36:02I'm only sharing this not to say someone else should do that. I would never be arrogant enough to think I know what's better for someone else in the context of their life. But I think the principle is, what is it you want more of in your life? Where are you struggling? What are one or two behaviors you might be able to bring into your life that will help them? And in order to think about that, you need time outside your life to really reflect and develop that self-awareness yeah no i do think it's so interesting because you know it's one of those things that you come back to again and again and again when you're looking at how to improve your life it's all around things like diet alcohol sleep exercise phones all of this and it feels like we're so far from it in this modern day kind of the the cycle we have and the access we have to all of this news it feels like we're naturally so far from it And it also feels like we need to consciously retract ourselves from the norm and from society's general behaviour in order to be able to, as you say, be happier or more in control or whatever it might be.

37:08So it does feel very hard to action. It is. It is. If you do what everyone else is doing, you're going to be the norm. You mentioned that word norm. The norm in society today is not healthy. You know, we have, but you know, many experts will say we have a mental health epidemic, right? We're not getting healthier as a society for all the technology, for all the innovation, we are getting sicker. You know, more and more people are struggling with their physical health, with their mental wellbeing, with their emotional health. You mentioned before about sugar and alcohol and how often we're talking about those things, right?

37:49Rather than creating mental space. This is an idea I'm writing about at the moment because it goes back to this idea that knowledge is not enough, right? If you go onto the news first thing in the morning, right? This is what happens for a lot of us. You see the negativity that's happening in the world. That creates emotional stress and internal tension within you, right? Because you don't like it. It doesn't feel goods. That emotional stress is not neutral. You will have to engage in some behaviors to neutralize that. And we often go to sugar, caffeine, alcohol. Those things are symptoms of the problem.

38:33So too often we're trying to say, I need to reduce my sugar intake. But we don't understand or we don't think about the fact that every single behavior in our life plays a role. Too often we try and change the behavior without understanding the role it plays in our life. So if, for example, the way you cope with stress is to eat sugar, you can do as many 30-day sugar detoxes as you want. You ain't going to change anything because that's your way of coping with stress. So you either need to address the stress in your life or you need a different different way of managing that stress. And you also said something, Grace, which made it, I don't know if what I'm going to say is going to sound controversial to you or not.

39:18We need to know what's going on in the world and what to care about. I've really been thinking about this over the last 12 months. So I don't watch the news. I haven't watched the news in about five years now. Apart from yesterday when I was at my mum's and the news was on, I was like, oh my God, this is so negative, right? That doesn't mean I don't know what's going on in the world. I pick it up on social media, but I don't actively watch the news. If you think about how we've evolved as humans, we haven't evolved to know what's going on 3 ,000 miles away in another tribe across an ocean somewhere, right?

39:53So the question we have to ask ourselves is, what is our responsibility in the modern world? How much do we need to be informed about? One of the phrases I live by is attributed to Gandhi, which is be the change you want to see in the world. I live my life by this because I honestly believe the way to change the world is to be what you want the world to be. So I try my best to behave and act with compassion. I try not to judge people. I try and be patient because when I can do that, that ripples to the people around me. And that then ripples to the people around them. Whereas if I see what's going on in a different part of the world, and I get frustrated, and that paralyzes me, and I get in a bad mood, and then I'm off with my wife and my kids, and I drink sugar, sorry, I eat too much sugar or drink too much alcohol.

40:48I don't know how that's actually helping the world. So I'm not pushing back on what you're saying. I'm just trying to explore that as an idea how much do we need to be informed about no i do think that is a fair point i think that there's two different aspects to it because i do think that we are enormously privileged certain people obviously more than others you know we haven't evolved to deal with this 24 hour news cycle we were never designed to be that way and now before now even more so than that 24 hour news cycle is this 24 hour news cycle about every single person we both know and don't know and kind of semi-know through a parasocial relationship and like all of these different elements, that it is very complex and there has to be some give in that.

41:30There has to be some element of, okay, it is better if I know what's going on in this, this, and this place so that I can care for it, so that I can advocate for change, so that I can write to my MP, whatever it might be. But I do agree that there is a certain aspect of it whereby, you know, usually the people who spend more of the time reading the news are also more inclined to care more about what those various things might be and therefore it just gets into this cycle of kind of negative mental space yeah i think you you raise some really really great points and i think again i think it all comes back to self-awareness we need to assess how we are so for example i never i never liked telling anyone what to do with their life i've never told a patient what to do with their life.

42:16I try and share information that if people want to experiment with it and see for themselves if it works, I think that's the best way. So if someone's listening and they think, you know what, that could be me. I think I'm over-consuming negative content online. Okay, do a challenge. For seven days, right, delete all those apps. See if you can not look at the news or social media for seven days. And each morning, spend five minutes just writing down how you feel. Just see, are you calmer? Are your intimate relationships better? Are you more productive. Do that and then spend seven days doing it the way you're currently doing.

42:51And then you start to build up the most powerful thing of all, which is not consuming information from experts. It's becoming your own experts. And then you can go, oh, wow. This is what I used to do when patients came in, let's say alcohol. They were drinking too much, for example. I never really wanted to, I never thought it was my job to tell them what to do, but the way I would always approach it would be, for example, okay, you're making a decision on a Friday when you go and have, you know, spend four hours in the pub with your mates getting smashed, that that's worth doing. Great. Got no problem with that.

43:30Okay. So what's the consequence on a Saturday? Oh, well, on a Saturday, I'm knackered. I've got a headache. I can't interrupt my children. My wife thinks I'm being a bit lazy, whatever it might be. Okay, fine. No worries. Okay. And let's try a few Fridays where you don't have that or you reduce how much. How does that then feel on a Saturday? Oh God, you know, when I only have one beer instead of five beers, I'm ready to take the kids out. I can interact with my wife. You know, we've got a better relationship. I said, okay, cool. You can now see the difference. You can make that decision now because you're empowered.

44:06I think no one ever changes because someone else has told them to. They might for a week or two, but in the long term, they never do. It has to become your idea. So I say to people, use yourself as data. Experiment. If you think, yeah, my job is to be informed about everything that's going on in the world today, the wars, the conflict, whatever it might be, because that makes me an informed citizen of the world. Great. see that for seven days and see how it impacts your life then try without and then you can find where's the sweet spot for you i think that's what we miss these days there's so much expertise out there and i say this as you know an expert online right a medical expert as it were i don't want people to just to take my advice and you know say yeah that's definitely right for me no try it for yourself does it work for you if it doesn't or it doesn't resonate with you it's probably not the advice for you yeah no I do think that's a really really good piece of advice more advice no but I do think so because I think that like being someone who's very much grown up with social media and always tries to you know be the best version of themselves and doesn't necessarily think that that means that I'm also going to be necessarily like the healthiest version of myself or whatever it might be like there are different balances elsewhere I do think that it's so easy to get sucked into a lot of things that say okay well you're going to be more mindful if you do this this and this and you're going to be more this if you do this this and this and you know I for one realized that like one of the things that makes me really really happy is like work does make me happy and I think working against it for so long to be like no I need to stop doing this much here I need to stop doing this much here it's like yes absolutely I need boundaries but I also need to know that maybe like maybe that's just something that I particularly enjoy and maybe I'm like hugely lucky to be in a situation where I can spend time doing something that I enjoy that much and listening to a lot of advice that's like no you should only do this you should only let this bleed into like hit this here and if you do more than that you're going to live a bad life I also feel like is counterproductive if anyone's feeling um sort of confused they're not sure where to start you know one thing I'd I'd really recommend is say listen okay, you don't know what to do with news and social media, all the negativity that's out there in the world.

46:24The first thing I'd say is that understands that we think from the research that humans take in nine bits of negative information for every bit of positive, right? For every one bit of positive information, right? So we have a negativity bias. That is what has kept us alive, right? 100 ,000 years ago, you had to know whether that noise in the bushes was a predator or the wind, and you were rewarded if you overreacted, right? If you thought it was a predator, it was just the wind, no problem, you survive. If you got it wrong, you didn't, right? So it's hardwired within us to be more sensitive to look out for negative information.

47:06That's why you've got to be so careful about what you do first thing in the morning because your thoughts, your feelings, your behaviors for the rest of the day are often downstream of the content you're consuming. If you feed your brain with negativity first thing in the morning, is it any wonder your mood might be slightly off later or you might feel slightly out of control? When you put it like that, it's not. So the three questions I ask myself every morning, yes, it's in my journal, but people don't need to get the journal, they could just do this, you know, on a piece of paper. And I think, you know, from the people who do this every morning, they say it totally transforms their days.

47:42Right. The first thing, what's one thing I deeply appreciate about my life? Simple question, right? We know from the scientific research that a regular practice of gratitude can help improve your moods. It can improve your decision-making. It can reduce anxiety. It can reduce depression. It can help you sleep better. The lists are endless. this? Answering that question will take you 30 seconds, a minute maximum. What's one thing I deeply appreciate about my life? Second question, what's the most important thing I have to do today? It's one of my favorite questions. It's the anti-busyness question because for most of us, our to-do lists are never done.

48:26That's an endless list. Even if you think you've done everything, your focus is going to be on what did you not do? What is the most important thing I have to do today? Forces you to make a decision. And when you start off, you're often like, well, there's an important thing at work. There's an important thing in my home life. You know, fine, start off with two. But over time, you realize there actually is only one most important thing. And the point is, it doesn't matter what you put down. What matters is that you put something down. And then if you do that thing, it means that that day was a win, right?

49:00So some days for me, it's like I must go for a 20 minute walk today. Okay. Some days it's like when the kids come home from school, I need to shut my laptop and make sure I'm fully present with them and listen to what they have to tell me. Other days is I must make sure after the kids have gone to bed, I spend some intentional time with my wife. By answering those questions, it doesn't mean that nothing else in my life is important. By saying I want to spend time with my wife doesn't mean that time with my kids is not important, but it helps direct the focus each day. And if that's all people ask themselves each day, it is inconceivable that your life won't change.

49:35Because if you do that seven days a week, then that means you're doing seven important things each week. You're doing 28 important things every four weeks. Your life is going to start to change. And the third question is, what quality do I want to showcase to the world today? Again, I love this question, Grace, because so much of who we are is reactive, right? We think that we have to be the person who woke up on the wrong side of bed on a particular day, but we don't, right? We've got a lot more agency over how we show up in the world. So for example, you can write down, I want to show the world the quality of patience today or compassion today, right?

50:18And you set the intention, this is how I want to behave. And if you have time, you can think about that. Okay, that means I want to get into work. I'm going to smile at my colleagues. If someone barges in front of me to get on at the tube, I'm not going to get annoyed. I'm just going to smile and go, maybe they're in a rush. Honestly, just spending a few minutes each morning answering these three questions will absolutely change the trajectory of your life. And if you do it every day, the same questions, you start to build up such a phenomenal self-awareness about yourself and you start to live more intentionally.

50:51So that's what I do each morning. It's the final part of my morning routine with a cup of coffee. But I honestly think if people do that, you know, in fact, I would say to people, don't just believe me, right? Don't just believe what I've said. try it for seven days if at the end of those seven days you go that's a complete waste of time I don't feel any different great stop doing it maybe not for you but if after those seven days you go wow I like how this makes me feel and I'm 99 % certain that for most people they'll go wow I had no idea that just answering those three questions would transform my life like this so I just say give it to go yeah no i think that's hugely useful advice and i think that as a whole in terms of like so much of that comes back to intentionality um and you know as you say that is also that time that you're spending alone it's that solitude it's also it's also that control element do you think then because so much of what you've said has come back to those three things do you think those three things are the most important when it comes to living a happy life, intentionality, control, having some time for solitude.

52:06Would you add anything to that? I think those are three very important ingredients. If I zoom out even further upstream, in my last book on happiness, I created a model for happiness called core happiness, as opposed to junk happiness. And core happiness was created as a, it's a skill that you can get better at. Happiness is a skill. You can develop it and cultivate it if you know what to work on. And the three components of core happiness are alignment, contentment, and control. So we mentioned control, right? Doing something each day that gives you a sense of control in a world that is fundamentally uncontrollable.

52:50It's important. That could be a routine, for example, like we've already discussed. The second leg of that core happiness tool is contentment. It's about doing things regularly that give you that sense of calm and peace. I think solitude absolutely does that. The third component to core happiness is alignment. When I say alignment, what do I mean? I mean when the person who you really are inside and the person who you are being out there in the world are one and the same. Basically, when your values and actions start to line up more and more. Now, journaling or solitude is actually a practice that hits all three components of happiness.

53:33Alignment, contentment, and control. Normally, you feel quite content and calm when you're having that practice of solitude. it's giving you that sense of control and it also helps you act in a much more aligned fashion. For example, that final question in the morning, what is the quality I want to showcase to the world today? That's alignment. That's basically saying, this is the person who I want to be, right? Now, just by putting that down in the morning on your journal doesn't mean you're going to be that person every day, but by asking yourself that question every day, you're gently nudging yourself.

54:09You're not beating yourself up in a compassionate way. You're going, you know what? I put patience down yesterday, but you know what? When my colleague sent me that email at 4pm, I got really pissed off and I sent a bit of a ratty email back. That isn't how I want to really be out there in the world. Cool. I can't change yesterday, but I can try in that moment today. If I get another email from that same colleague or another colleague, I can try and react differently. And that's what living an intentional life is all about. None of us are perfect. You know, we all have days where we haven't slept or we've allowed our stresses to mount up and we have been a bit off with people or we've sent an email that we regret one hour later, right?

54:50Or left a message or whatever it might be. But why I'm such a fan of solitude each day is you're never going to change that behavior unless you can reflect on that behavior. Think about the world's best athletes, right? They all have coaches, right? They all have coaches because they can't see all the time what they're doing wrong, right? Let's say you're a tennis player. The tennis coach can say, hey, listen, whenever you get under pressure in the final part of a match, your backswing gets a bit shorter. That's why your shots go out. It's very hard in the moment to know that yourself. And so they can work on that.

55:30And next time that player is in the final set of a big match, oh yeah, I remember I always get short. No, I'll make sure I don't get short and I go for a nice long backswing or whatever it might be. Well, a daily practice of solitude allows us to be our own coach, right? We can reflect on our own life. We can go, wow, I didn't behave the way I wanted to yesterday. That's not the best version of me. I'm going to try harder today. And that's why I'm a big fan of these practices because, hey, listen, Grace, I've written books full of information on sugar and alcohol and stuff, and that's useful. But knowledge is not enough in and of itself.

56:08If you don't have insights, if you don't have self-awareness, if you don't know that alcohol is your way of dealing with the conflicts in your relationships, it doesn't matter. You're never going to change your relationship with alcohol because it's a symptom of another problem. And I think, you know, this daily practice of solitude helps you understand that. Does that all make sense? That makes so much sense. And I think that is the perfect place to end because I think that you have, I don't even know what more to ask because there is so much gold dust in there. So thank you so much for sharing your wisdom.

56:41I feel like a lot of people will find this incredibly helpful. And I always just feel like these types of conversations are so helpful in just recentering and being able to, as you say, like come back to being your own coach a little bit, revisiting what you might have misaligned recently. So thank you so much. My pleasure, Grace. Thank you for having me on your show.

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