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- [00:00]
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- [02:01]
Mia Sorrenti
Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Sorrenti. Today's episode is the full recording of our recent live event with Dr. Rongan Chatterjee, one of the UK's most influential doctors and host of Europe's biggest health podcast, Feel Better Live. More Dr. Chatterjee joined us live at the Emmanuel center in London to discuss the science of happiness and what it really takes to live well. Drawing on the newly updated edition of his best selling book, Happy mind, happy life, Dr. Chatterjee shared practical tools for cultivating calm, confidence and resilience, from improving our relationship with our phones to dealing with criticism and learning to treat ourselves with respect. He was in conversation with journalist and author of Meditations for Mortals, Oliver Berkman. Let's join them both now live on stage at the Emmanuel Center.
- [02:49]
Oliver Burkeman
Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks for coming out on what when I was outside more than an hour ago was a very unpleasant evening. So I'm grateful that you're all here, you know this, but I'll let you know anyway that Rangan Chatterjee is one of the most influential doctors in the uk, with over two decades of experience as a gp, now hosts Europe's biggest health podcast, Feel Better, Live More, which I've had the privilege of appearing on. And he regularly appears on television and national radio. His most recent special for Channel 4 just a week or two ago, I think. Right, and available for streaming now, in that he explored whether lifestyle changes can replace long term prescriptions for conditions like depression, chronic pain, type 2 diabetes. He's also the author of six Sunday Times bestsellers. Jeez. And we're here to focus, I suppose, on. We're here to focus on one of them, Happy Mind, Happy Life, which has just been refreshed and reissued with a beautiful new cover, a new reflective chapter from Rongen, and worth the COVID price alone, a foreword by me. So I definitely want to give you the opportunity to set out your stall and talk about the sort of basic thesis of this book, the tenets of core happiness and what follows from that. But I feel like I should start with a sort of obnoxiously combative question just to get some juice into proceedings. And so people don't think it's all too chummy or anything like that, which is, I guess, and it applies to me too, really though, which is like, what the hell do we think we're doing sitting here on a stage in Westminster chatting about personal happiness and health when the world is in such chaos? Whichever direction you look, whether you're talking about the planet burning or the descent of America into authoritarianism or the rise of ethno nationalism in this country, or you look at the suffering all around the world, whether AI is going to kill us all or at least kill all our jobs, whichever way you look, there's some absolutely vast, scary crisis unfolding and there's a very sort of natural or instinctive thing that I think some people want to say, which is like. Well, like, we can't focus on this sort of stuff in this sort of time. I don't believe that I've got a sort of professional interest in not believing it. But I'd like to know, assuming you agree with me, why you don't believe it.
- [05:29]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. First of all. Well, first of all, great to see you all. Thank you so much for coming out on this cold, rainy London evening. I think that's a fantastic question to start with. A lot of people will say this, you know, how can we possibly think about our own happiness when there's this destruction going on in the world and people are struggling with famine and war and whatever it might be? And I would argue that it's even more important to focus on our own happiness when things like that are going on. Because if we don't do that, what we're effectively saying is that we're going to allow negativity and adverse events, wherever they are going on in the planet, to affect our own personal lives. And that can be problematic for a variety of reasons. Right. A. On an evolutionary level, I don't think we've ever been exposed to this volume of information. So I don't think the human brain is necessarily wired to be aware in real time of all the conflict that is going on across the world. I think very much we probably wouldn't even know what was going on on the other side of the savanna when we were evolving. It was very much, you know, what was going on in our hundred, 150 people around us is probably the extent of what we knew about. But what I've seen in practice before is if you get so overly affected by some. Quite just to be clear, you know, I'm not a fan of a lot of the things that are going on in the world, but if you allow that to overly affect you, what happens is that you have this passivity that comes over your life. You feel that everything you do is worthless. You're then not of that much use to your partner, your children. And I very much subscribe to the phrase that was attributed to Gambi. Be the change you want to see in the world. I think you change the world one person at a time. I believe that with all of my heart. And I think that we all have a responsibility. If you're lucky enough to not live in a war zone or be able to walk safely down your neighborhood without fear that something's going to happen, I think we should be grateful for that. And actually in many ways I think it's our obligation to work on our own happiness. And I think then you are better able to help the people around you. And I think that's how the world actually does change. So that's. I guess I could answer that question in many ways, but I think that's probably my current thinking on the topic. I think it's our responsibility to look after our own happiness and when we've got these fortunate lives.
- [08:13]
Oliver Burkeman
So the next question is how we do that, of course. And here we run into sort of paradoxes and problems that have fascinated me for a very long time. Even if you decide, okay, this is important to focus on, I'm going to focus on it. There seems to be something about happiness as a concept, as a goal whereby pursuing it and chasing after it causes it to slip from our fingers. It becomes this thing that we're sort of trying to, trying to get to. And that seems to cause it to be in the future. Right. There's a sort of. It falls over and over, further and further over the horizon. And of course there are many wisdom traditions, religious traditions that identify that struggle as the cause of our suffering. So I guess this is like part two of my attempted a combative opening question. Like is there any point anyway? Because it seems that the dissatisfaction that's inherent in pursuing happiness seems to make people pretty miserable and a misery that's sometimes encouraged by the consumer context and parts of the self help industry.
- [09:22]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah, it's a great question. As you were asking that question, I was thinking back to my. To my first answer to your very first question, which I'd just like to add something if possible before I come to.
- [09:37]
Oliver Burkeman
I will permit it.
- [09:38]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Will you permit it? Thank you. Inbuilt into the first question in terms of how can we possibly think about our own happiness when all this, whatever stuff is going on in the world. Also, I think it's predicated on the belief that, that the external world and the external circumstances are responsible for our own internal happiness and well being. And I don't necessarily agree with that. Even as a framing for thinking about our own personal well being. I'm not saying that external circumstances don't impact us. Of course they do. If I lived in a war zone, for example, I think it would be very unrealistic for me to think that actually it would be, it would be just as easy to be happy as maybe it is for me in the life that I do lead. And this is something that comes up a lot in terms of my wider work on health. So you mentioned in the intro that last Thursday my latest Channel 4 documentary came out, which is called Live well with a Drug Free Doctor. And when I was talking about the show, one of the things I've been saying is that 80 to 90% of what we see as doctors today is in some way related to our collective modern lifestyles. That's not about putting blame on people. It's saying that modern life and the way we live today is having an impact on various aspects of our health. Now, what often happens is if you say that, people will then say, but this is not a personal issue, this is a social issue. And the point I try and get across is that these things are not mutually exclusive, that both things can be true. So people who want to criticize my work in that area will say, there's no personal choice here at all. It's all about just raising the social. You know, basically improving poverty. There's a lot of research showing that if you live in deprived socioeconomic areas, your health outcomes are worse than if you live in affluent areas. I'm aware of all that research and I've worked for many years in deprived areas. So in particular there was a practice in Oldham, in North Manchester I worked at for seven years. These are people not earning much money on the lowest rungs of socioeconomic status. I was still able to help these guys make positive changes, reverse depression, reverse type 2 diabetes, because I believe in personal agency. I believe that you should never assume that someone will not be able to make a change unless we change the external situation. And I think one of the reasons I'm so passionate about this is because of my background. Growing up in a family of Indian immigrants to the UK in the 60s, I used to go to India every other summer. And I have seen and spent time with people who don't have much at all, but are still incredibly happy. Right. So I guess I'm strongly influenced by this idea that it's not just external, our external circumstances in life, a good job, a nice house, a good paycheck that ultimately determines our inner well being. I don't think that's the case. I think it can be hugely influential, but it's not the entirety of it.
- [13:05]
Oliver Burkeman
And it's this incredibly difficult line to tread. Right. Because the moment you say that in any sort of public context, including this one, there's. There's a completely reasonable response, which is that, like this message is doing a huge amount of kind of ideological work, even if you disclaim that to Tell people that ultimately you just got to pull your socks up. You can do it. It doesn't matter the context you're in.
- [13:27]
Rocket Money Advertiser
But.
- [13:27]
Oliver Burkeman
Right. It really just does take. The necessity just does require holding both those ideas in your head.
- [13:34]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
They both can be true, and I think they both are true. We should absolutely be advocating for social change and improving the quality of living for everyone. And we can help individuals understand what are the things that they can do in their life that are going to make a difference. Very, very simplistically, if you were in my practice in Oldham and you weren't earning much money at all, and you hated your job and you were on benefits like many of those patients were, if I could teach you how to manage stress better or teach you various techniques, let's say a breathing technique that can help you be more resilient to stress, I can say this because I did this right. Yeah. That wasn't removing the poverty in their life. That stressor was still there. But they were able to go and face that stressor with much better internal ability. And over time that does change things. So it's, you know, I think this is a really important point that it's both. It's external and it's internal. And by virtue of the fact that I write these books like you, Oliver, I guess I do believe in the individual's ability to make changes in their life. And one thing I learned in Autumn is you can never. So I think there's a dangerous undertone when we start to talk about it's all a social issue. Rongan, you shouldn't be talking about personal change. You should just be helping advocate for social change, which is what some people will say to me. I don't agree with it and I don't like a certain element of that attitude because it implies that it's kind of almost like this. You're not capable of making change. Right. Wait till we've sorted out your life for you and we've done things, then you'll be okay. I don't agree with that. And that's one of the things I learned in Autumn is that never, ever assume that an individual is not capable of change. Sometimes we think they're not because it makes us too uncomfortable that, oh, actually you're still able to make this change even though your life is. Do you know what I mean? And I don't like that.
- [15:47]
Oliver Burkeman
There's a really interesting sort of nuance here or sort of where this argument I've seen and I've been on the receiving end of this to some extent. Right. Writing column about this stuff for the Guardian for many years, where it's almost like an alibi for someone who actually is in a position of sufficient privilege that they can really talk about finding the time and the resources to make changes to their lives. There's an ulterior reason for wanting to believe that actually it's all structural. Right. Because then it sort of spares you as someone who absolutely is in a optimally privileged position from making those individual changes. So it's kind of. You can use all these arguments to do whatever you need them to do. Anyway, sorry, I think I should ask you to sort of set out the sort of core ideas in this book because you have solved the problem of human happiness. It's happened. And I mean, I'm kidding. But on the other hand, like, I think there's an enormous amount of very, very precisely expressed, sort of boiled down distilled wisdom in this book. And I'd like you to share a little bit with us tonight. This idea of core happiness, which is a term that you use, as I understand it, firstly, to talk about something that is distinct from sort of necessarily being permanently filled with ecstasy and in a position of total excitement and joy every second of the day, which feels unrealistic. But also to distinguish it from what you call junk happiness. Right. From the things that we can always do if we want to, to sort of make ourselves, to zone out a bit and make ourselves feel better. So what is core happiness?
- [17:26]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
So core happiness, I believe, is a happiness that we all actually do want. So sometimes these days people will say that, you know, it's not about happiness. Life is about meaning or purpose.
- [17:38]
Oliver Burkeman
I say that quite often.
- [17:40]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. So we can talk about it because I guess I have a slightly different perspective on that. I do think every human being wants to be happy. I think the problem is that you could take 10 people off the street and ask them for 10 definitions of happiness and I think you could get 10 different answers. So I think the image of happiness that we're often sold is that billboard image of the smiling couple, the good looking couple with their children on a beach. I don't think that's necessarily the happiness that we're all looking for. That's a pleasurable experience I'm sure all of us would enjoy if we were having it. But I think happiness is something that every human being really does want. And so what I try to do in the book is explain what are the components of that. So I compare core happiness to junk happiness. So I say in the book that all of us have our own junk happiness of choice, whether that be a chocolate bar, alcohol, gambling, one hour on TikTok or Instagram, whatever your junk happiness habit of choice is. I don't think that's necessarily a problem in and of itself. I think the problem is if we engage in those habits too often or mistake them for being the true happiness that we're actually looking for. And I don't think that is really the feeling of happiness that most human beings are actually after. So the happiness that I believe we all want has three components, three ingredients, as it were. Alignment, contentment, and control. And going back to your question a few minutes ago, Oliver, which we never quite got into, which is when you try and pursue happiness directly, it often seems out of reach. And so my model of happiness that I present in happy mind happy Life is basically saying that happiness is a side effect. You don't directly pursue core happiness itself. You pursue and work on your alignment, your contentment, and your control. And when you work on these three things, the side effect is that you're going to be happier more often. Okay, so what is alignment, contentment, and control? Okay, so alignment is basically when your inner values and your external actions start to line up more and more. So basically, the person who you really are on the inside and the person who you are being on the outside start to match up more and more. Contentment is about what are those things you do in life that actually give you that sense of calm and peace? And contentment and control is arguably one of the most important things. When I say control, I'm not talking about controlling the external, external world. I'm talking about a sense of control. We know from quite a lot of the research that people who have a strong sense of control over their lives are happier, they're healthier, they have better relationships, and they earn more money. And I think there's a, you know, why do I think that the control elements of happiness is so important these days? Well, it actually goes back to your very, very first question so that. Oliver, the world feels out of control, right? You cannot control the external world. The external world will do what the external world is going to do. But if we can do things regularly that give us a sense of control, that's, I think, one of the best ways to navigate all of the uncontrollables that are out there in the world. So, for example, I do have a little routine that I do each morning. It's just something that works for me, which we can talk about later, if people are interested. But essentially what that does each morning is it grounds me and gives me a sense of control. So even if the news headlines are scary and worrying, even if I have too much to do in my email inbox or there's problems at work or whatever it might be, I make sure I do things regularly that give me a sense of control over my life. And essentially the whole idea of me writing this book was to try and give people in a practical framework that they could use to work on their happiness. I don't think happiness is something that just comes to us if we happen to be lucky. You know, the weather's good and our boss is nice to us, and our email inbox is manageable. You know, these things are all nice things to happen if they are to happen, but I don't think we should necessarily be reliant on those things happening in order for us to be happy. And so this was my attempt to provide a practical framework to help people, I guess, work on their happiness. Just as you would, you know, you'd work on your muscles in the gym, I believe that you can also work on your happiness by using this framework.
- [22:35]
Oliver Burkeman
I really want to come back to that question of control, because I think that is, I don't think we necessarily differ, but I feel like all the direction of everything I've been exploring in recent years has been about, like, getting over my tendencies towards wanting more control and being less of a control freak. So I think you've indicated why these two thoughts might be compatible. Before we get there, there's also something that I took from the way you've written about this, which I think is fully intentional on your part. But you tell me about the relationship between present happiness and future happiness, right? So that whole thing that I was alluding to about how chasing happiness seems to cause it to run away, and this problem that feels very personal to me of setting up whatever it is that you want out of your life as something that you're striving towards in the future and as a result, kind of denying to yourself in the present. Because you're just, right now you're going to be working really hard on your physical health. You're not going to be enjoying physical exercise because you're trying to get to the point where you've got it, sort it out, or you're going to meditate every day, but with an attitude of really kind of grinding through it, because one day you're going to be sort of wonderfully enlightened and it's going to have been worth it. And I take something in this idea of core happiness to point towards the notion that in fact focusing on momentary daily present happiness, things that you can do today, tomorrow, is not only kind of forgivable and okay, but it's actually almost the way that, that you get to that any future ecstasy that may be on the cards for you. Is that fair? Is that fair?
- [24:08]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah, I would agree with that. Very much so. In fact, over the last few months I've been thinking a lot about goals and whether goals, you know, we assume goals are a good thing certainly in kind of in western culture, you know, what are you striving for? What's, what's your five year plan? What's your goal for 2026? Right. And as I get older, more and more I'm starting to challenge the idea that goals, actually I think goals can be useful if they provide you almost a direction in which to go with your life. But I think the skill really is in setting the goal and then forgetting about the goal. The goal is there to go. Well, my intention is to be happier, let's say in general. But I'm no longer going to obsess with. At what point can I say I found it? I'm really happy now because otherwise you then get caught up in this. I had this with some friends at Parkrun where these guys I know and I've got to know over the years at my local Parkrun. One guy, basically he didn't run at all five years ago. You know, when he first started, he was, you know, struggling to get around in about 30 minutes or so. And now he's like crushing 22 minutes every week. He's started training, he's taken his diet seriously, but he's always dissatisfied, right? And I'm like, mate, you know, five years ago you weren't even able to run and now because you know he has these goals that you want to break 21 minutes now. So we would say that's a good thing because it's driving him to do better. But is it a good thing if that desire to run a 21 minute parkrun is causing weekly frustration and annoyance, even though you're running way quicker than the vast majority of people in the country and you're doing something amazing each week for your physical and mental well being. And let's say he does get the 21 minutes one day, what happens? He's happy for about 20 seconds and then the next goal comes, which is, oh yeah, now I've got to break 20 and I think it's this constant thing that we push change somewhere into the future. We're never actually experiencing our change. And I would say one of the things that's massively changed in my life over the years is I'm just not that bothered about the future anymore. It's not that I'm passive about the future, but I'm trying to experience and enjoy my daily life. And if I can string, you know, if I can string 52 weeks of that together a few times in a row, well, that's a few great years of really intentional living.
- [26:55]
Oliver Burkeman
Right? Because there's a risk with goal setting, isn't there, that you like, you take the. You take some state that your life is not in now and you sort of really focus on the fact that it's absent from your life now. And as you work towards it every day, you're reminding yourself of the thing that you don't have and can't be happy with. That it's like a real recipe for stewing in misery. Right? Because it's the exact opposite.
- [27:18]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
It is. And I used to be someone who would set goals and I would beat myself up massively if I didn't achieve those goals. And actually when this book first came out in March 2022 was the first got to be careful whether you actually share some of this because it's not actually that relatable to people. But hey ho, I'm a little bit fatigued. So you end up sharing stuff that possibly you shouldn't. I remember before this book came out in March 2022, I had finally made peace with the fact that my self worth as a human being was not dependent on how well that book did. Honestly, because most of my life up until that point, I was very much driven by external validation. And I shall shared before I write about that in chapter one and where a lot of that came from in my childhood and through all this kind of work I've done over the years, I made peace before that book came out that actually, you know what, this is a fantastic book. It's the best thing I'm capable of at this moment in time. Whether it does well or not doesn't say anything about the quality of the book or who I am as a human being to the point where. And I think I know Emily's here and Pippa from Penguin I think is here as well. I actually remember the book came out and I got a text from Pippa about a week later. He's one of my editors at Penguin and said can you call me? So I thought, okay, this is. I wasn't used. Yeah, I was like, okay, sure, yeah. So I called her and obviously it's a massive deal for Penguin because they said it's going to be the number one Sunday Times bestseller on Sunday. They were really, really excited. And it wasn't that I wasn't excited, but I honestly didn't feel that much in the moment. I was like, okay, great. I'm glad people like it. But my wife happened to be away for two days and I was trying to figure out if I had enough time to go to the supermarket and cook dinner before I got anoushka from the bus stop. And I was like, okay, this is great, but I need to crack on with my day now and actually do, you know, be a dad, basically. And it was a great moment for me because you can talk about these things and say, oh, my self worth isn't dependent on how well it does. And then that was in the moment. When I got told that it's going to be a number one selling Times bestseller. I was just like, yeah, great. And I sort of made peace with the fact that I've written the book. It's out there in the world now. Other people will decide whether it's good or not. It has no reflection on me. And I feel living in this way, it's just been so much more helpful for me. You're less dependent on things going a certain way. You said it about control before, Oliver. Right. And I think that I thought long and hard about whether control was the right word. Because, like you, I think, is control the wrong word here? Because I'm not trying to encourage people to control their world. I think it comes down to external control versus internal control. External control is something I don't think we have. You can't control the news headlines tomorrow. You can't control the weather. You can't control so much in your external world. And I think when we try and control our external worlds, I think that's when we start to cause a lot of stress for ourselves and, and a lot of, frankly, unhappiness. But I think your internal world is something that you can work on and develop a much greater sense of control over. And so, for example, chapter five in this book is called Seek Out Friction. And really, I don't think I wrote it like this, but you can look at that now through the lens of internal control. And that is basically saying that whenever you come across social friction, someone cuts you up as you're driving to work Someone nicks your parking space, someone pushes in front of you before you get on the tube or whatever it might be, that situation actually, at its core, is neutral. You can actually allow that situation to stress you out massively by the way you perceive that situation, or you can train yourself to look at these situations differently. And when you do that, you develop such a strong internal sense of control where actually it's okay when the world doesn't go the way you want it to because you know how to frame it in a way that gives you that sense of control back. And the example I use in that chapter to illustrate the point. And if any of you listen to my podcast, you might have heard me talk about this. But I reference a lady called Edith Eger in that chapter. And for those of you who don't know, I spoke to Edith Eger about four years ago on my podcast. And when I spoke to her four years ago, she was 93 years old. She was a lady who has such warmth, compassion, and forgiveness, which is remarkable when you understand her life and her life. When she was 16 years old, she ended up in Auschwitz concentration camp. And she told me the entire story on my podcast of what happens. It was just a regular day. She had a date with her boyfriend that night. She was trying to choose a dress that she was going to wear in the evening. And then her family get a knock on the door, they get put on a train, and it takes them to Auschwitz. She tells me that when she gets to Auschwitz, within two hours of getting there, both of her parents are murdered. And then she tells me so many things during our conversation which literally have transformed the way I view the world. She said a few hours after her parents were murdered, she gets asked to dance for the senior prison guards in Auschwitz. And she said to me, rongen, I never forgot the last thing my mother said to me before she was murdered. And the last thing her mum said to her was, edith, never ever forget that nobody can take from you the contents that you put inside your own mind. So she says to me, when I was dancing in Auschwitz, I wasn't dancing in Auschwitz. In my mind, I was in Budapest Opera House. I had a gorgeous dress on. There was a full house there. The orchestra was playing. And I thought, this is quite remarkable. She's literally in a death camp and she's reframing her experience in her mind. And she told me many more examples like that. And some of the final words she said to me, well, the final words she did say to me, which I've never Ever forgotten were these. She said, Dr. Chatterjee, I have lived in Auschwitz, and I can tell you the greatest prison you will ever live inside is the prison that you create inside your own mind. And the penny dropped for me that day. And that's what the whole chapter dedicated to that story, basically, because what that conversation with Edith taught me was that I get to frame my own experience with pretty much anything that goes on in my life. So for a few months after that conversation, I did an experiment every evening once my kids were in bed. The experiment was Rangan. Where today did you get triggered or upset by events that were completely outside your control? Right, I'm talking about control here. And I'd go, okay, yeah, this happened. Or that person said that. And then I'd ask myself, why? Why did that bother you? Did it remind you of something your mum said to you when you were a kid? Did it remind you of something else? You know, why is it that that bothered you? And then I would have to reframe that. What's a different story? I could choose around that situation that would make it have less of an impact on me. And initially, you do that intentionally. You can't do it in the moment. You do it actually in the evening, later, after that incident has passed. You do it enough times, and before you know it, you find in the moment you're not finding yourself getting stressed out by things, Right? So I would say for quite a few years now, I would say very little, you know, I'm not perfect, but very little now stresses me out. And that's what I mean when I say internal control, because I create the narrative on that.
- [35:29]
Oliver Burkeman
I find this fascinating because I feel like I'm. I listened to what you're talking about there in terms of having that sort of. That moment of listening to Edith Eger's incredibly powerful story. And I think I know that the extraordinary power of that and the courage of that woman, and I know a little bit about her story, none of that would mean that this insight stuck more than about three days with me if I was, you know, the fact that it's so powerful and so true and there's so much depth to it, and it happened in such circumstances of horror. Like, this is not enough at second hand necessarily for any of these insights to stick. And obviously that is a problem that anyone writing a book like this faces one remove, which is just like everything in here can be deeply wise and true and mind changing, but there's always that sense of, like, how do I prevent myself just being back to exactly my old tricks in about a week.
- [36:37]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
I don't think there's any perfect answer to Oliver. I think you're absolutely right there. I think we all respond to different messages, and we're ready for different messages at different points in our life. For whatever reason, back then, I think it was 2021, maybe 2022. I can't remember when I had the conversation with her, I was ready for that message. Maybe I was experiencing lots of stuff outside my control that was stressing me out. And I'd already been thinking about this. Maybe that's why I invited her onto the show. Right, because you're sort of subconsciously trying to bring people into your life that you know can help you. So I know that other people will hear that message and it will just go, yeah, that's a very powerful story. And I'm going to crack on with my life now. For whatever reason, for me at that moment in time, it totally penetrated right through to my soul. And maybe it's the way I view the world, what we're talking about right at the start. I do believe that every individual has the ability to make better decisions that will improve the quality of their life. So maybe for me, in my mindset, when I heard her do that, I thought, oh, Rongen, you've got. Got no excuse, right? Right. You literally have no excuse. If she can reframe her experience in a death camp, you've got a pretty good life, right? You're a medical professional, you earn decent money, you can heat the family home and feed your family healthy food. You know, your life's pretty good. Wrong. And if she can reframe things in Auschwitz, you can do it here. So I actually took it, Oliver, as inspiration. But I think we all, you know, you write. You know, your last two books are just phenomenal. You know, 4,000 a week, it's my meditation on mortals. I love those books to bits. And let's say 4,000 weeks, for example, there's a similar message in chapter one to elements of 4,000 weeks that is about this idea that time is limited. And there's an exercise at the end of chapter one called write your own happy ending, where I ask you to imagine you're on your deathbeds.
- [38:40]
Oliver Burkeman
Go through this. By the way, if it's doable, yeah.
- [38:42]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Okay, I'll click to it. But the point I'm trying to make is that there's a similar concept throughout 4,000 weeks. Someone will probably read my book, and for whatever reason, the way I articulate it, maybe it doesn't land. But maybe they read 4,000 weeks and go, oh my God.
- [38:59]
Oliver Burkeman
Right, right. It's where you are in your life.
- [39:01]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
It'S where you are. I don't think we can guarantee that everyone reading our books is going to take the same message from them either. But the exercise I'm talking about is chapter one is all about this idea that I think we confuse success and happiness. We actually, I think that's one of the sort of, I think one of the biggest obstacles for many of us in terms of getting to happiness, assuming it's somewhere you could actually get to, which is, you know, that's a separate point altogether, is that we confuse happiness with success. So we get seduced by society's idea of what success looks like. Many people end up guessing their version of that and then finding that they're still unhappy and discontented. And so there's some. I know there's a very personal story about my own father in that, in terms of how I think my dad confused success and happiness. My dad was an Indian immigrant to the UK in 1962 and for 30 years he only slept three nights a week. So he would do his day job as a consultant in Manchester Ward Infirmary. He'd come home at six, half six and then he'd leave the house at 7pm and do GP house course all night and come home at 7am, have breakfast and then go to work all day. He did that for 30 years. So he only slept three nights a week for 30 years, which is staggering and no doubt the reason why he got the autoimmune disease lupus at 58 and was on a dialysis tube for 15 years. That sounds quite an extreme, extreme example. But I have seen versions of that in my practice for many years where people think that they're immune to the laws of the kind of, and the kind of limits of the, of the human body and they, they push too hard. They think, I just want more promotion. Oh, I'll just keep working or I'll, you know, just wait until I get a little bit more money and then I'll slow down. And the amount of patients I've seen over the years who wish they'd stopped a little bit earlier. It's all these cliches like the 53 year old executive who kept pushing until they had a heart attack and then when they've had the heart attack, they wish that they'd stopped earlier. Or the 46 year old lady who never did anything for herself. Everything was for her partner, her children, her parents. Until they come down with the autoimmune disease. And I've seen this time and time again that people keep pushing until it's too late. And so there's an exercise in chapter one called Write youe Own Happy Ending. And it's dead simple. I'd encourage you, whether you get the book or not, I'd really encourage you to think about it in your own life. So imagine right now that this is your final day on Earth. Okay? So imagine you're on your deathbed. Look back on your life and ask yourself, what are three things you will want to have done right now? Some of you will come up with this straight away. For others, you'll have to think about it a bit. We kind of know what most of us are going to say because palliative care nurses tend to tell us what people say on their deathbed. So, Bronnie Ware, who wrote the wonderful book the Five Regrets of the Dying, after caring for people for eight years at the end of their life. So they all kind of say the same things. I wish I'd worked less. I wish I spent more time with my friends and family. I wish I'd allowed myself to be happy. And I wish I'd lived my life and not the life that other people expected of me. Right? So we know that most of us in here are going to have some version of that on our deathbed. So you write those three things down and then you find fast forward from the future back into the present, and you write down three weekly happiness habits that if you did, each week, would guarantee you get the happy ending that you just said that you wanted. So I haven't done this exercise for about 18 months now. But the last time I did it, I thought, well, on my deathbed, I will say I will want to spend a lot of time with my friends and family. I once have had time to pursue my passions, and I will once have done something that makes a positive impact on the world. So my weekly happiness habits then, that I put down are. Okay, well, number one, then, if I. This is what I put down last time I put. If I have five meals with my wife and kids each week where I'm not distracted by work or emails, then I know I'm tending to the most important relationships in my life. If each week I have time to either play my guitar, write a song, or go for a long walk in nature, I know I'm creating time to pursue my passions. And if I. The third one is if I release a weekly episode of my podcast which I've been doing now for almost eight years, that I know I'm doing something each week that leaves a positive impact on the people around me. And that exercise is so deceptively simple because it doesn't mean that all the stress in your life is going to vanish. But I have those three happiness habits literally pinned up on my fridge. So I'm constantly being reminded that those are three things that are really important to me. Because the mistake I think many of us make these days is that we think we'll get to the important stuff in our life when everything else is done. But everything else is never done. There's always another email to write, another task to do. So in amongst all the busyness and craziness, those three things serve as a weekly reminder to me. Rangan, just get these three things done each week, then you know you're getting towards it. And if I don't do them, this is. As a recovering perfectionist, this is very important for me to say, I don't beat myself up if I don't do. And it's only three mindful meals with my wife and children. It's just to remind us, okay, cool, you only managed three this week. Let's make sure you didn't set the.
- [44:59]
Oliver Burkeman
Original goal at 14. Right? Or something as well. It's important to sort of say, like, it's not. You're not saying every breakfast, every dinner, you know, it's like it's already. Yeah, I think there's a. I just want to make sure I've got time to get a few more of my own questions in, but then it will be time for, for yours. So please do be thinking of them. I wanted to ask you again, in this sort of practical vein, a lot of the content of this book and of your wider work is about the importance of social connection and family, friends, just any form of interaction with other humans. To some extent. I was really, I'm really struck coming to record the podcast, the degree to which you have chosen, if I understand correctly, to sort of live broadly in the geographical area that you were raised in, I think, and in the capacity to be in contact with members of your extended family as well as prioritizing spending time. I hope you weren't insulted by the implication in my forward that, you know, you do sort of one is led to your studio through your kind of comfortably disorganized, you know, everything's just happening. The family life is unfold. There's a very strong, strong sense that, like, you haven't, like, pushed this all to one side and decided to spend your life living in an enormous mansion far away from your origins, or spending 300 days a year on planes or something like this. And I'm interested in how you've done that and how. I suppose the question is how you've managed to sort of resist the lure of the fame and profile that you've enjoyed that might lead you away from that kind of connection. And then secondly, like what any individual person can do as a sort of starting step when it comes to being more connected, less sort of socially atomized. Because there is this problem that if you start from the perspective position of not having a huge social circle, say it's kind of difficult and annoying and bothersome and maybe for some people, much worse than that, scary to sort of push yourself out into that world of connection. So there's sort of two questions there. And one.
- [47:11]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah, thanks, Oliver. Firstly, yeah, I actually posted about this a few weeks ago. I believe that one of my greatest successes in life is to live in the town where I was born and. Cause I still do. I grew up in the northwest of England. That's still where I live. I live literally five minutes away away from the family house in which I grew up, where my mum is still living today. And that was very intentional. Now, I appreciate not everyone does have the luxury to do that and that many people also want to get as far away from their parents as they possibly can. Right. So I acknowledge and recognize all of those things. And I can say for me, and some of this will be that my cultural upbringing as well, I'm sure. But looking after my parents is something that is really, really important to me. So I was around. One of the reasons I moved back from Edinburgh, where I went to medical school and I was working as a junior doctor. I moved back to the northwest of England in 2003 in order to help look after my dad. And one of the reasons I'm still on the northwest of England is because I helped to care for my mum. And I'm just very clear that no amount of success for me would be worth it. If I wasn't able to do that, I'd feel like I'd almost cheated myself and who I am as a human being. But when I say that, it doesn't mean I judge anyone else who doesn't do that. Just to be really clear. I really don't. It's just very important to me. Now, I also happen to. You know, I grew up in a really nice town in the northwest of England as Well, so if it wasn't a nice town, would I still be living there? Possibly not. Right. So it's easy to make that decision when you are already living somewhere that's quite a desirable place to live. So I'm trying to be as honest as possible, but as I get older and I realize that Mum is coming towards the end of her life, it's just I know that when Mum's no longer here, I will be so pleased that I was able to care for her and see her regularly. My brother lives 30 seconds around the corner from me. Maybe this is quite rare these days, but for me it's super important. It doesn't really feel like a sacrifice. And in many ways it actually, I think, insulates me from a lot of the trappings of being well known and having a public profile and things that have happened to me over the last 10, 12 years. I think the fact that I still live in my hometown, it really grounds you and. And it means you don't get caught up in all the hype or what people say about you, good or bad. It's just like I still live the same life that I used to live before all that. And I appreciate what you said in the forward about what it's like when you come into my house, come into the podcast studio. I don't feel I've changed at all. I feel I am just a regular family guy doing my thing. You just happen to come through my house to get to my podcast studio and I never want to put on acts on for anyone that I'm anything other than who I am. And I think the people who enjoy my content, my books and my podcast probably enjoy it in part because I think I'm quite. I'd like to think I'm quite relatable.
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Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
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- [54:05]
Oliver Burkeman
It strikes me that you must have had some. A few really Hollywood a list people just sort of coming through your. Your.
- [54:12]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
You've come through twice.
- [54:14]
Oliver Burkeman
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I mean, really. Right, Like, I'm not talking, you know, like some. Some.
- [54:19]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Pete.
- [54:19]
Oliver Burkeman
Yeah, it's interesting. It's interesting. Anyway, I did want to. I'll just get a moment. One more question in before we. We move on to questions. And then as this draws towards its last portion about being a podcaster in the space that you are in now, and this is not, I was going to say it's not an invitation for you to trash your professional colleagues and rivals, but you should feel free because that would be great. We're in an interesting stage now where these incredibly influential podcasts dominate the space. It doesn't really seem to make sense to call them alternative media anymore. They are the. They are a crucial part of the way we get our information, especially on sort of health and psychological topics. This is this wonderful democratization. So different to like, you know, being told by your GP exactly what to do in the 1950s if you were lucky enough to, you know, it's just like, that's just like you do this, don't ask questions, don't do research, don't find out. But there's obviously another side to that, right? The sort of. The rise of the. And I very much do not include you in this. In this, but the rise of the sort of professionally extremely credulous podcast host whose job is. It seems to be to sort of take anybody presenting themselves as. As knowledgeable and conclude this week that that's the secret of being healthy or happy, and then next week it's something else. And obviously the economic incentives of how the space works are to some extent set up for that. It does seem to me, I'm not just saying this, it does seem to me that you've really taken some. A decision to, I don't know, maybe even forego some level of even big influence that you could have if you, if you sort of threw caution to the wind there. And I'm interested how that works. What you. How good or bad you think it is that there is, like all this kind of questionable quasi expertise circulating in this general space at the moment. And how you navigate that. That wasn't a very finely honed question.
- [56:31]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Look, I think this is something that a lot of us recognize now, right, that this coming Monday, my podcast is eight years old, which is quite remarkable. I was thinking about that today, that it's almost eight years since I've been doing the show, and podcasting has changed dramatically. Thank you. Podcasting has changed dramatically, particularly in the last three years, I would say. Where it is the mainstream now, I would say. So there's some big global podcasts that are bigger than telly. So I agree, you can't really call this alternative these days. And what a lot of people don't realize is that I think a couple things are happening, right? So, yes, I think at the inception of podcasts, let's talk about it through the health and wellbeing space in which I operate. I think it was fantastic where you could. There was more information available for more people, completely free of charge to listen to, to help empower them. That's a good thing compared to how it used to be in the past. And most things come at a cost. So I think the cost of that now is that there's a lot of confusion out there. Because actually, I guess one of the benefits of television, or when there used to be guardrails on, who was able to give you information, was there was at least some quality control done at source before you would hear an opinion. Whereas that's kind of gone now. And the algorithms very much reward the most outrageous things. It's just a fact. It's the more divisive, the more controversial, the more reach, particularly on things like YouTube or Instagram or TikTok, your content will have more reach. And so, you know, there are plenty of podcasters out there who will use that algorithmic reach to their benefits. And I'm not here to judge people. Everyone can do what they want. But I think what's happening is also a lot of people are starting podcasts because it's a good business model, which is quite interesting to me because I never started my podcast as a business. I started it to try and help people. I thought this is a really awesome medium to help get more information out to more people. And I think for the first two years of my show, we didn't take a single advertiser until I realized that I had to pay for the show. And yes, now there's a team of eight people who need renumerating because it's a lot of work to put out these highly produced shows. Basically, I think it comes down to what we were saying before. You were asking me about living in my hometown. I was chatting before about the three ingredients to happiness. One of those ingredients being alignment. So what's alignment? Alignment is when your inner values and your external actions are starting to line up more and more. So me being five minutes away from my mum and being able to see her regularly and care for her is very, very important to me. It's me living in alignment with who I am. Let's say I didn't do that and I moved to London to get, let's call it a better caliber of in person person guess which I don't necessarily agree. I would get anyway. But let's say you made the case. Well, let's say I was winning in the podcast space by doing that. I think I'd be losing in the alignment space because I'd be winning at the wrong game for me. Right. And so I think that theme of alignment is important for us all to think about is what game are you playing in life? Let's say the game you're currently playing, you end up winning. Is that the game you wanted to win in the first place? And I think one of the strengths of my podcast and how I navigate all of it is whilst the team has grown and the show has grown, there's a few things that have never changed. I still hand pick every guest myself and the criteria I have on whether I choose a guest or not is primarily, am I really, really interested in this human being? I want to sit across the them for two hours exploring their ideas. Whenever I move away from that. And I have, you know, I've been tempted in the past and maybe I've made poor decisions at various times. I've always regretted it afterwards. I always thought, no, no, Rongan, you always only choose guests who you are desperate to talk to. And so I think the podcasting space has changed. There are, you know, a lot of podcasters are getting large paychecks have been put in front of them, but they require them to hit certain amounts of views on YouTube and then in order, if you want to hit a certain amount of views on YouTube, the only way you can guarantee that is by playing the algorithm. We as a team have decided that I don't really want to play that game. I could play that game and possibly do really well at that game. I just not interested. And the reason why I'm still able to do a podcast Eight years after I started. Started is because I deeply care about every single guest. And I hope you know it's not uncommon that guests will tell me afterwards on the way out, they'll say, oh, wrong. And that was one of my favorite conversations. Oh, you actually read my book. Thank you. Oh, do they not all read your books?
- [61:44]
Oliver Burkeman
Well, no, no, they don't.
- [61:46]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
No. And that's fine. But for me, it's really important that if I'm inviting someone into my home, which is where my studio is, that I do them the courtesy of actually having spent the proper amount of time preparing to have a deep and meaningful conversation with them.
- [61:59]
Oliver Burkeman
You can tell by the way I'm getting jumpy here that it's time to move.
- [62:03]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
And you.
- [62:04]
Oliver Burkeman
Lots of control audience questions. And I'm a control freak. And it's two minutes past the time I was supposed to move on to your questions.
- [62:12]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
There's quite a few at the front.
- [62:13]
Oliver Burkeman
Right, okay, let's do some front row. I can see.
- [62:17]
Mia Sorrenti
Thank you. With your original series of Doctor and the House, have you had feedback on how they've progressed and how they're doing?
- [62:28]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah, that's a great question. So the ladies. Sorry, what was your name? Susan. Okay, so Susan Throne is Referring to some BBC documentaries that I did back in 2015 and 2017 called Doctor in the House, where I lived alongside families who were struggling with various health problems. And they were already under doctors. And after spending four to six weeks with them, I was either able to help them fully reverse their conditions or significantly improve them by using nutrition, lifestyle and mindset. Basically, quite a few of them I actually stayed in touch with for a number of years, but that, I think, tended to fade out over Covid. Like many of our relationships, it just sort of faded away. So I haven't actually spoken to them for quite some time now. But last I spoke to them, the ones who I was in touch with, they were still doing really well. But I think it would be fun at some point to revisit those families and see actually what was able to stick 10 years on and not just for six weeks, basically.
- [63:31]
Oliver Burkeman
And let's take, if you don't mind taking the other two that were in the front here together, just because I'm a control freak and want to do it that way.
- [63:37]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Hi.
- [63:38]
Mia Sorrenti
Hello, fellow Doctor. So perfectionism is my second name. So my question is about that. So how do you think we can deal with past mistakes or things that we didn't do continue to affect our.
- [63:54]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Lives as they go on?
- [63:57]
Mia Sorrenti
And are there any Ways you'd suggest that we let go of past regrets and move on without them holding us back.
- [64:04]
Oliver Burkeman
Was it at the other end? End of the. Was it you? Yes. It was you.
- [64:07]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah.
- [64:08]
Oliver Burkeman
Thank you.
- [64:09]
Mia Sorrenti
Firstly, thank you. Thank you so much for that. Really, really enjoyed it. There is so much out there. Books, podcasts, and some very useful information as well as. Not so useful. It's quite a difficult question, but I'm going to go for it. If there was just one thing, just one thing that we could practice and do daily that you think can really help us with this idea of happiness. I'm still gonna read the book. I've got it. But just one thing that I'd be really, really appreciated. And maybe one thing that you do and that you practice.
- [64:38]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. Great. Okay. Two brilliant questions, I think. So first of all, I think your question. What was your name? Sorry. Christina. Okay. Thank you for your question, Kristina. I think it's hard, you know. First of all, I'd recommend Oliver's email, which has got. What's it called again?
- [64:54]
Oliver Burkeman
The Imperfectionist.
- [64:55]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
The Imperfectionist.
- [64:57]
Oliver Burkeman
Thank you for the recommendation.
- [64:58]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
No, it's because I think we're both recovering perfectionists.
- [65:02]
Oliver Burkeman
Oh, for sure. Well, sorry for you, but yes, yes, yes.
- [65:06]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
I've come to. I personally have come to see regrets as a form of perfectionism. I find it very helpful to look at it that way in my own life, because at its core is this idea that I could have acted differently. Right now. There's quite a few things in my life over the last years that have really changed the way I view and experience the world. One of them was a few years ago where following a podcast conversation I was having, I really took on the belief that if I was that other person, I would be acting in exactly the same way as that person. Okay. So if there was ever actions by someone else that I didn't like, I would go, yeah, but, Rongan, if you were that person, if you'd had their upbringing, their parents, the bullying experiences they had, all the early life exposures they had, the toxic first boss, whatever it might be, you would think and act in exactly the same way as them. Now, someone might say, well, that's not true, but it's a belief I choose choose to take on because it helps me. Because what it means then is that if there's someone I don't like in terms of the way in which they're acting, instead of judging them, I first approach it with curiosity. I'm like, oh, okay, what's gone in in their life? That has meant. So they've ended up today with that viewpoint. Right. So someone has a completely different viewpoint that I may find abhorrent. I always find it useful to go, yeah, but if you were them wrong and you'd be thinking the same way as them, we can also apply that to ourselves. Right? Okay. We're always doing the best that we can, I believe, based upon what we know. I really do believe that. So I don't see this any point now of me going back with the knowledge I have as a 48 year old and the life experience that I have to now judge my former self who didn't know as much as I know today. So over the last years, I don't really have regrets anymore. It doesn't mean I can't learn from the past. It's subtly different. But I'm no longer going to beat myself up over the past. So I can look at various past events and go, if I am to come across this situation again, I'm going to make a different decision now because I've learned, but I'm no longer going to beat myself up for what I did because back then I did the best that I could. So there is some on this in this book and actually in another book that I wrote recently called Make Change at Last, there's a whole section on this as well in chapter three, which I think you might find useful. But it's a great question. Hopefully there's a couple of things there for you to think about. What was your name? Sorry? Sharon. Sharon, thank you for your question. So you're, I think from recollection, she's trying to make me choose one thing. No, you're not being lazy. I think the.
- [67:57]
Oliver Burkeman
This, by the way, this is, this is not a view, I think, but this is like the favorite, the podcaster's favorite question, isn't it? It's like what's one thing our audience could do to xyz?
- [68:07]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
So it's a. I don't think I asked it. Maybe I need to.
- [68:09]
Oliver Burkeman
No, I think you shouldn't ask it because it's over asked in podcasts. It's a good question to ask here tonight look.
- [68:15]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
So I will start off the answer, Sharon, by first of all saying I think we all live different lives. Okay, so what's going to work for. For you may be different. What's going to necessarily work for me. And depending on where we are in our lives, I think different things are going to be more necessary. Having said that, I would say for Most people in 2026, the most important thing they can do each day for their happiness and their health is have a daily practice of solitude. Right? And why do I say that? Well, it goes back to what you were asking before Oliver, about there's all this information out there now, right? There's a chapter in this book called Take a Daily Holiday, which is basically speaking to this idea, which is this idea that if you're constantly in your life, you can't really reflect on your life, right? If you're constantly consuming content from the outside, even good quality content, you can't really listen to what messages your body is actually sending you, right? So if people get up and you're constantly, you know, immediately you're consuming news and email and social media, and then you go for a walk and you listen to a podcast and there's just noise constantly from the outside coming in at you. And I think one of the reasons we're so confused by all the information that's out there these days is because we've forgotten how to listen to ourselves, right? This is why people get confused on, well, is it that diet or that diet, or is it, should I do Pilates or yoga? You know what, it probably doesn't matter, right? What probably matters is that you can pay attention to whatever you're doing with diet, for example. I really believe this with all my heart, right? Sort of before about podcasts who one week will say, this is the perfect diet that will save your life and reduce your risk of Alzheimer's. Then they'll have a guest the following week and the exact opposite, right? And then the listener gets really confused as to what we should be doing. And the natural tendency is to think that, oh, I just need to make sure I'm listening to, well, credentialed experts. But the problem with that line of thinking is that you can get now two very well credentialed experts saying two completely different things. So what do you do then? Well, people then will say, well, Dr. Shashi, I don't know which expert expert to trust. And I say, well, maybe in 2026 that's not the best question. Maybe it shouldn't be, which expert should I trust? It's why do I no longer trust myself? So I think there are some core principles of healthy eating that we should all be following. And within that, I think we need to experiment. And let's say two extremes could be a low carb diet versus a plant based diet. Let's say, for example, instead of going, well, which expert should I trust? We could go, well what does my life look like if for four weeks I do one of these diets and during those four weeks I pay attention to how do I feel, what's my energy like, what was my sleep like, what was my concentration like, what was my gut like? All these things. And then you try the other one for four weeks and you pay attention at the same time. I bet for most people they will know what is the right diet for them after those four weeks instead of having to overly rely on an expert like me to tell them what it is. So I think we all need to spend more time with ourselves so that we can understand ourselves better.
- [71:48]
Oliver Burkeman
Let's take a couple more questions. I won't insist on three, but let's go further somewhere.
- [71:53]
Mia Sorrenti
Thank you for such an amazing conversation. I wanted to go back to your time in Oldham and the people who were able to find happiness amongst really dire circumstances. With your help, did you identify any really clear patterns between those that were able to get there versus those that stayed on that treadmill of misfortune? And can you apply those patterns to people that comparatively have. Have much more privileged lives, but are still trying to find a bit more happiness in their day to day?
- [72:29]
Oliver Burkeman
And just before you answer that very good question, let's go to this side. And I did see, okay, there's a hand waving back and forth. Thank you. Yes, I know who I'm pointing at, but I don't know if the person with the microphone.
- [72:43]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Thank you very much.
- [72:45]
Mia Sorrenti
Thank you for the conversation. And my question, the question is how suffering dance with happiness? Because we know that we're going to suffer like it's a human experience. We always try to avoid suffering, but at the same time suffering could be a teacher. So how those two concepts or. Yeah, concepts dance or talk.
- [73:13]
Oliver Burkeman
Thank you very much. Thank you.
- [73:15]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah, two brilliant questions. Let me first of all start. Sorry, I didn't get your name. So I'll thank you for your question about my time back in Oldham. That's a really, really interesting question that I've not really thought about for some time. What would tend to happen in Oldham is because it was a busy NHS general practice, you have to be careful which patients you choose to try and spend a bit more time on. Because if you did that for, let's say back then, sometimes you'd see 50 patients in a day, sometimes you can't go into depth with 50 patients or you just can't do your job. So I would naturally choose some people at certain times to go, oh, I think they're a Bit more receptive. Now, I can't say this holds true in every case, but I think the differentiator, and I think this applies beyond that patient population as to the people who can change their lives for good or find happiness in dark situations compared to those who were unable to. It comes down to their mindset on life, right? It comes down to whether they believe in personal agency or not, right? So if you believe, quite understandably that you're a victim to life, right, that actually there's nothing you can do, you've been dealt a really poor hand in life, you know, you don't have the job that you want, everything's against you, your boss doesn't treat you well. I sometimes call this, and I don't mean this in a derogatory way, I sometimes call this a victim mindset to life, right? Where basically everything is against us, there's nothing we can do. I never found that those patients, whether I was in Oldham or not, tended to do particularly well over a long period of time. And this goes beyond happiness, even for long term health change, because it was just the root cause mindset is that actually it's not down to me, it's down to things outside my control. Whereas the ones who believed actually that even though my life isn't where I want it to be, but I'm capable of making even small changes that over time will improve things for me, I think that was the key differentiator. And as I say, if I take that beyond Oldham, I actually think one of the most important things you have to think about in your own life is what kind of mindset do you take to life? Do you take a victim mindset or what I call an architect mindset to life? The architect mindset is one. And this relates to your question, actually the second question on suffering, right? You know, negative situations are going to come our way in life, or let me put it another way, situations that we wouldn't ideally choose. And I think as a parent, that's one of the things I find hardest about being a parent. I know on a personal level that it's all the conflict and really hard experiences in my life, like my dad dying, for example, that have led to the most personal growth. Right. But of course, as a parent, I don't want my kids to suffer and go through those things. So I think both questions relate to your framing basically suffering. You know, do I love the word suffering? I guess I don't tend to use the word suffering myself, although I know a lot of people do. Right. I Just I very much have taken one of the things I did a live tour last March across the uk and one of the quotes, one of the phrases I put up to discuss is that life is simply a set of experiences. It's the story we put onto those experiences that determine their impact on us. And so whether you call something suffering or not what I call my dad's death suffering, I don't think I would. It was at that time the hardest thing I'd ever been through. And it took me a long time to sort of make peace with the fact that dad was no longer sort of around. But I also know that the person I am today has come from dealing with my dad's death. In fact, I now see my dad's death as a gift that he gave to me because all the things I've learned about myself through that, I don't think I would have learned if my dad was still alive. So, you know, I'm trying to answer your question. I think it was about, you know, the relationship between suffering and happiness. I think it all comes down to, I think, the skill of happiness or one of the skills. And probably I'd put this in the control arm of the three ingredients. I would say the internal control we can gain by learning how to reframe experiences. Or I can now look at my dad's death as a positive. And when I say that, I want to be really clear. I'm not saying that anyone else should look at a loved one's death in that way. I certainly wasn't looking at it in that way in the two years after my dad died. But it is 12 years on now. Now I can actually look at it as a real positive. It doesn't mean I didn't love dad and I don't to want wish he was still here. In many ways, I do. At the same time, I think his death has made me the person who I am today and allows me to do what I do today. So, yeah, I think suffering is a part of life, but we can learn a lot through suffering. And I think if we don't end up having any suffering or negativity in our life, I think it is quite hard to be happy because I think those things really shape you and you learn stuff about yourself through. Through those experiences. Would you add anything to that, Oliver?
- [79:04]
Oliver Burkeman
Well, just that idea of. I think that idea of his death as a gift from him to you is a very powerful one that I'll be thinking some more about. I mean, no, I don't think I have much to add. I would just quickly, on the first of those questions that I think there's lots of research, right. To suggest that. And this gets done in what gets called experimental philosophy, where people are asking not do we have. Have free will or not? But what do people believe about whether they have free will or not? And people are a lot happier when they believe they have a certain degree of agency over how things go, almost whether it's true or not. Right.
- [79:43]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Well, it's like as I was answering your question before, right, About. I choose to believe that everyone is doing the best that they can based upon their life experiences. Now, someone might present me with evidence, say, well, that's simply not true, Rangan. Okay, but my life is better when I choose to take on that belief. It makes me less judgmental and it makes me more compassionate. So I prefer the Rangan who I am when I take on that belief. And I think it. So I. You know, one thing you'll get in this book also is I think there are certain beliefs that you can take on if you want to. And I think. And ultimately you don't have to, but you can ask yourself, is your life better when you are taking on certain beliefs or is your life worse? And then if you like it, great. If you don't, fine.
- [80:31]
Oliver Burkeman
It's not even that you're deluding yourself. It's more that you don't know the answer to this question. So you have to go for. You have to work on the assumption of one thing or the other. You might as well work on the assumption of the one that makes for a better life. Let's take a couple more questions.
- [80:45]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yes, my question is, is for somebody who really struggles with their mental health, like somebody who really struggles on a daily basis, for example, somebody who has obsessive compulsive disorder and they live in a prison almost every single day, what.
- [81:04]
Rocket Money Advertiser
Would your advice be to somebody like that?
- [81:07]
Oliver Burkeman
And let's get. Let me. Let me just. Because I did see a lot of hands going up in this side of that. Yeah, right. And then. Sorry. Also on the side. Thank you.
- [81:17]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
So I just wanted to get a sense of Ranger. You've done a few podcasts on Burnout. Wanted to ask what your personal experience, if any of it, and then how maybe the core happiness stool might relate to kind of dealing with that and managing it. I work in the nhs. It's pretty tough, pretty relentless, and it obviously makes a real big difference, you know, working a great team and stuff like that. But it'd be great to get a sense of what your advice would be in that scenario. Okay, great. So we'll take those two. Oliver. So the first question was relating to, I guess the sort of broad theme was when people are really, really struggling with their mental well being, what can they actually do? Or what is one thing I'd recommend? So I've come across this situation many, many times in practice. I can think of quite a few patients who were suicidal and were just at a loss as to what they were going to basically do. And there was the real apathy and an indifference to actually do anything. And one thing I found incredibly helpful for those patients was to help them choose one thing that they could commit to each day. Not lots of things, but one small thing. And there was one patient, I remember, I can't remember when this was, but maybe around 2015, 2016, who was really suicidal, really struggled with depression, had suicidal thoughts. And what ended up turning their life around was basically a five minute workout that they would do first thing in the day, every day, right? Now why did that work? Because it's not necessarily the workout that was the point. It was the fact that basically everything felt that was out of control. Everything felt too much. So I would break it right down to the smallest possible thing and say, well, what is it you can agree to with me right now that you're going to do each day before you do anything else? It's a commitment you make to yourself and you make to me that you're going to do that. And they would start off each day and do this little five minute workout. And what that did was it changed the way they viewed themselves. So instead of being someone who had this apathy towards life, couldn't do anything at all, they showed themselves each day with real world evidence that they were capable and they could do something. And what that does is it builds a very important force which is momentum. Now, I can't say this works for everyone, just to be clear, right? But I think when people are in a really dark place for their mental well being, there's something incredibly powerful about doing something for yourself each day and actually making it a habit. A lot of people, again, going back to the question right at the start, Oliver, when I talk about lifestyle and the sort of things that we can do, people go, yeah, that's great, but it doesn't work if you've got really bad depression. It's like, well, I kind of have seen quite a lot of people with depression over the last 24 years. And when you say that this stuff doesn't work. You're just wrong. Right. Because we sort of have this assumption that when people are struggling, they can't do anything and it's not true. And I think a lot of this comes down to the skill of the healthcare professional they're with. Can that healthcare professional connect, make that people feel respect, feel that they're a human being. That's worth something. I found whenever I've been able to do that and encourage them to make one small change each day, that change change leads to a domino effect. But you don't start by overwhelming someone. You start with the smallest thing. So I don't know if you're talking about yourself or someone close to you, but I would encourage you to think about what is one small thing you could commit to each day. Like a real commitment. Not just, yeah, I'm going to try and do this. It's like, no, what am I actually going to do each day? And you very quickly change momentum and you change the way you view yourself. Okay, so that's my answer to that question.
- [85:44]
Oliver Burkeman
And you're going to need to do the other one nice and super quickly.
- [85:48]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Okay, so you talk about burnout and how the core happened, so might relate to that. And if I've had any experience, yes, I have, I'd say probably the time when I experienced it most obviously was in the final few years of my dad's life, because as well as being a busy GP at the time, I had a young baby at home, I was sort of quite newly married and I was helping to care for my father. And it was just seven days a week, it was incessant and I was a lot younger. But I think back now to think of how the hell did I cope back then, right? It was really, really hard. So one thing I learned in my own experience of what I had, burnout was if I could do one thing for myself each week, right, even at like 20 minutes on a Saturday morning, just something to nourish me, I found I could cope with the rest of the week just fine or not just fine. It would make it much easier to cope with the rest of the week if I did something to truly nourish me at least once a week. So that's what I. There was no science behind that. That was just me trying to figure out how to sort of feel better and actually get through my time. When it comes to how the Core Happiness tool fits, it totally fits. Because one of Burnett has many, many causes. One of them is to do with our external stress load for sure, you know you've got too much to do at work and it's overwhelming your capacity, your capacity to actually do things. What you're being asked to do is beyond that. But burnout doesn't just come from external stress. It also comes when we're doing things that we don't want to be doing. So the alignment leg of the Core Happiness Tool is about internal values and external actions starting to match up more and more. We find, and you can see this in the burnout literature, that actually if you are working or living much more in alignment with your values, you're much less likely to, to burn out. And often when we're in stressful jobs and stressful situations, it changes who we are. We respond to the external stressor. We become reactive, we become a bit. I'm not saying you. Just to be fairly clear, we can become stressed or a bit unkind or not as giving as we might ordinarily be, which is not truly who we are, but it's who we became as a result of our work situation. So I actually leave that. Core Happiness Tool would be very useful as a way of helping you or anyone in your life look at burnouts and look at the things that you can do to start improving it. I tried to give a very quick.
- [88:20]
Oliver Burkeman
Answer to a very complex topic. Absolutely. So we could talk for so much longer.
- [88:24]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Thank you.
- [88:24]
Oliver Burkeman
Thank you. Thank you for that. Yeah, thank you. Listen, all I have to do now as we finish up is to thank Rangan for a really fascinating conversation and to all of you for being here, for your attention, for your, for your questions. Thank you again to Intelligence Squared for organizing this event. That's all for us from us. Have a lovely evening. Good night.
- [88:54]
Mia Sorrenti
Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was produced by me, Mia Sorrenti and it was edited by Mark Roberts. For ad free episodes and full length recordings you can become a member@intelligencesquared.com membership and to join us at future live events, head over to intelligencesquared.com attend to see our full live events program. You've been listening to Intelligence Squared. Thanks for joining us.
- [89:27]
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Foreign.
- [89:34]
Mia Sorrenti
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