Pod Insights 10% Happier with Dan Harris 9 Ways To Break Free From the Habits That Are Holding You Back | Dr. Rangan Chatterjee About this episode How your reliance on being liked, being comfortable, and being perfect is blocking you from making the change you want.
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee https://drchatterjee.com/ is one of the most influential doctors in the UK with over two decades of experience. He now hosts Europe's biggest health podcast, Feel Better, Live More https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/feel-better-live-more-with-dr-rangan-chatterjee/id1333552422, he is the author of 5 Sunday Times bestsellers, he regularly appears on BBC television, national radio and his TED talk, How To Make Disease Disappear https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=gaY4m00wXpw&t=1s, has almost 6 million views.
In this episode we talk about:
Why we have an overreliance on experts and perfection Barriers and solutions to long term change How to stop people pleasing (or become a "people pleaser in recovery") Tips for neutralizing emotional discomfort and stress The "life is an escalator" myth, and our relationship with complaining How to adapt to adversity without feeding our bad habits Escaping the trap of busyness And much more
Related Episodes:
Why Your Bad Habits (and Addictions) May Be Getting Worse - and How Mindfulness Can Help | Dr. Jud Brewer https://www.meditatehappier.com/podcast/tph/jud-brewer-258 How To Actually Keep Your New Year's Resolutions | Dan Solo Episode https://www.meditatehappier.com/podcast/tph/dan-solo-habit-formation
Follow Dan on social: Instagram https://bit.ly/3tGigG5, TikTok https://bit.ly/3FOA84J
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Our favorite playlists on: Anxiety https://spoti.fi/3Qa8kMT, Sleep https://spoti.fi/3MjtMxF, Relationships https://spoti.fi/3QvyA5J, Most Popular Episodes https://spoti.fi/3QxZASc
Transcript 14,772 words · 7 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:05 Dan Harris? This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, everybody. How we doing? Today, we're going to talk about habits of mind that may be holding you back. I'm referring here to things like your reliance on perfection, your reliance on being right all the time, your reliance on being comfortable, your reliance on being busy, and much more. My guest is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, who has written a book in which he taxonomizes nine areas of what he calls overreliance. And he talks about how these nine things are holding you back from making the changes
0:48 Dan Harris? you might want to make in your life, and how to break free from them. Aside from the examples I listed above, we also talk about our tendency toward overreliance on experts instead of listening to ourselves, our overreliance on being liked by other people, and our overreliance on things never going wrong. He has a theory that I like called the escalator theory, which is the fallacy that life should always be a smooth upward trajectory. I have fallen prey to this fallacy many times, so we'll talk about that. Before we dive in, though, I just want to say two things. First, a little bit more about Dr. Chatterjee. He's been a practicing physician for more than two decades. He's also a published author. His latest book, in which he lists these nine things that hold you back, is called Make Change That Lasts. And he's the host of his own podcast called Feel Better Live More.
1:33 Dan Harris? The other thing I want to say is that this is yet another episode that is overstuffed with practical strategies. So I will remind you that if you're a paid subscriber over at danharris.com, you will get a cheat sheet that sums up all the key takeaways, and also comes with a full transcript. Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, coming up right after this.
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2:55 Dan Harris? Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, welcome to the show.
2:57 Speaker 03 Dan, thank you so much for having me. I'm really looking forward to our conversation.
3:01 Dan Harris? Yeah, me too. We were introduced by a mutual friend, Jay Shetty. So before we dive into the list that forms the spine of the book, which I'm really interested in, let's just start high level for a second. I'm curious, as a medical doctor focused on lifestyle medicine, this is a book about how to break free from toxic habits. I think I can see the through line there, but I'd be interested, from your point of view, how did this book arrive?
3:29 Speaker 03 Yes, so as we're speaking, Dan, I've been a medical doctor for 23 years. And during my career, my thoughts on health and wellbeing, and frankly, happiness, to broaden this out, have evolved quite a lot. So I left medical school in 2001, thinking that I had all the tools that I needed to help my patients get better. And now with hindsight, I realize for the first few years, there was a bit of discontentment within me as I practiced medicine. Because What I learned, which is what many doctors learn, is that the tools we learn at medical school are fantastic for some things, but not for everything.
4:12 Speaker 03 And I think the simplest way for people to imagine this is that the health landscape of the US, the UK, and frankly, many countries around the world has dramatically changed over the last twenty, thirty, forty years. So thirty, forty years ago, most of what we saw were what we call acute problems. You know, you have a chest infection, you go to see the doctor, they listen to your chest, they see that you've got a fever, they diagnose it, they give you a prescription, and a week later, your problem has gone. Okay, so our training is very, very good for these acute problems. Or you have a heart attack, or you get knocked down in the street by a car. But eighty to ninety percent of what we see today
4:56 Speaker 03 is in some way related to our collective modern lifestyles, the way we're living our lives. Dan, I'm not putting blame on people. I understand that modern life is really stressful and that people are unable, or they feel unable to live the lives that they want to live, right? But nonetheless, the tools that we learn at medical school don't work so well for I would say eighty to ninety percent of what we see. And so I've been on this journey to figure out, well, how can I truly help my patients? Not just give them a pill to suppress a symptom where I know they'll be back in three weeks saying it's not gone, or give me another pill, which is what I did for a few years. I thought, well, there must be another way.
5:39 Speaker 03 And there's been quite a couple of powerful experiences in my career that have really forced me to change the way that I look at health and medicine. But the reality is that once you understand that most of what we see is related to the way we're living our lives, then it's kind of obvious, if you follow that train of thoughts, that the way to help people then is to help them change the way that they're living their lives, right? When I put it like that, I think it's quite obvious. But I still think people only think about that in relation To things like type two diabetes or obesity. But actually, the same principles apply for most of what we see.
6:21 Speaker 03 Anxiety, depression, irritable bowel syndrome, gut problems, low libido. Our lifestyle is hugely impacting that. So in 2015, Dan, I I got the opportunity to make a primetime BBC One show called Doctor in the House, which has now been shown in 70 countries around the world. And in that series, I helped a family reverse their type two diabetes in 30 days. I helped a lady with panic attacks reduce them by 80% in six weeks. I helped a lady with fibromyalgia pains who'd had pains for 10 years and was unable to even go to work or walk around the block. She was pain free after six weeks. I did the same thing with menopausal symptoms.
7:04 Speaker 03 And I'm not saying that to say I'm anything special at all. I don't mean that. What I mean is on that show, I was able to demonstrate that if you can help people with their nutrition, their lifestyle and their mindset, which is really, really important, their mindset, you can have a profound impact on multiple different symptoms. So circling back to your first question, how did this book come about? Well, a lot of what I do as a doctor is trying to help my patients make changes to their lifestyle. But Dan, I'm sure you will recognize this as much as the audience will. All of us can make changes for a few weeks, maybe a few months.
7:47 Speaker 03 But often we can't make those changes sustainable. We revert back to where we were before. And I believe the reason why is because we haven't got to the root cause of our behaviors. So the central message in this book is that every single behavior in your life serves a role. You'll never change the behavior in the long term unless you understand the role that it plays in your life. I'll give you a really quick example that hopefully makes it clear to the audience. If you're Alcohol consumption is your way of managing stress. Well, you can decide in January or February or whenever that you're going to cut out alcohol for thirty days.
8:32 Speaker 03 And you may well succeed, but often people end up where they were before, unless one of two things has happened. Either the amount of stress in your life has to have gone down, so you have no need for that alcohol. Or you need to find an alternative behavior to alcohol to manage your stress. And I, I think, Dan, when I put it like that, it sounds rather obvious, but I don't think that we think about habit change and behavior change in that way. We're too focused on the behavior instead of understanding the energy behind the behavior, if that makes sense.
9:12 Dan Harris? It does. So a couple of things, just to reflect back to you, just to make, just to make sure I understand it. One is you became a doctor at an interesting time where there were these macro forces in the society. It used to be in medicine, when my, my parents who were doctors were coming up, the, the profession was really good at just treating an acute issue. You come in, there's something immediately wrong. We, the medical profession, surround the football and help you with the right medicine and other interventions to get cured. The, the new problem is that we have these underlying sort of noxious emergent properties of, of modern life that are making us sick.
9:52 Dan Harris? Overly processed food, sedentary lifestyle, individualism and loneliness that have deleterious effects for our health. And these underlying trends are causing these diseases or health issues that aren't effectively treated with acute medical interventions. They, we need to address the underlying lifestyle. And so that has become the main focus of your medical career. And of, of course, as part of that, making change is a huge element. And making change, we know for humans is, is really hard. Hence this book, it's a kind of, and this is, I think, the second part of what you were saying. It's kind of like, we know there are lots of, and we're posting this at a time where we've just come through
10:36 Dan Harris? the beginning of a, a new year and on this show and elsewhere, people are talking about these little hacks you can deploy to, to change your habits. But actually, what you're trying to focus on is like a deep. Habit change, getting at the root of why we do what we do and really understanding that and addressing it at a root cause level. Okay, so that's my attempt to summarize a long answer, a great long answer, just to be clear, long answers are welcome here. Did I come close?
11:01 Speaker 03 That was perfect. I love the way you did that. You did it in two parts. I think that's very, very accurate. Again, I just want to emphasize, none of this is about blame, right? I, I don't blame people, I don't judge people. I became a doctor to help people and that is in essence, you know, what you've just said is how I view the world, how I view healthcare. But also, you know, Dan, you know, the name of this podcast is 10% happier, right? And I've also spoken a lot and written my last book on happiness, actually, because what people don't realize is that the things we're talking about, these behavior changes, it isn't just health, it's also happiness, it's also our relationships.
11:44 Speaker 03 These things are not quite as separate as we often make out. And I've realized as a doctor, I need to be interested in my patients' happiness as well as their health because they're not completely separate. There are very strong links in the literature between health and happiness and the relationship goes both ways, you know, healthier people are happier and happier people are also healthier. We've seen that there's different studies that show it's a bidirectional relationship and I've seen that firsthand. And what I've tried to do in this book, Dan, is put it all together, 23 years of medical practice, tens of thousands of patients seen.
12:24 Speaker 03 There are some commonalities you see when people truly transform their lives for good, not just for January, not just for February, but they manage to do it like it's a real change in their life because then that's what people really want, right? They don't want to listen to this podcast or another podcast and go, yeah, I can, I can do this thing for the next week. They actually wanted to make a meaningful change where they go, wow, I kind of get that. And I think one of the central ideas, in fact, I opened the book with this story, actually. It's a very powerful story. There was a GP friend of mine, so another medical doctor, who was a real expert in type 2 diabetes. And she was basically counselling
13:07 Speaker 03 a patient in front of her. You know, the patient was newly diagnosed with diabetes. And she was saying, look, this is the situation. And, you know, too much sugar and ultra-processed foods are going to have this kind of impact on your insulin resistance and your blood sugar. And the patient said, hey, doc, why on earth should I listen to you? You're fatter than I am. Now, we may say that that's an insensitive thing to say. And yes, you know, normally you wouldn't expect that kind of thing to be said in a professional interaction. But my friend phoned me, well, she texted me and said, Ron, could we chat this weekend? I thought, this is weird. Obviously, something's up. So I spoke to her. She was really upset.
13:51 Speaker 03 She said, hey, yeah, I know the patient probably shouldn't have said it. But you know what? The patient was right. They were absolutely right. While I was counselling the patient on the dangers of excess sugar, in my desk drawer, I had a big packet of Cadbury's Giant Buttons. Right? So the reason I start the book with that story, Dan, is to illustrate the point that knowledge is not enough. Right? We think that all we need is more knowledge. Oh, let's listen to another podcast. Let's get another book on sugar. Well, I submit to you, Dan, that most people who are consuming excess sugar, let's say, or consuming excess
14:31 Speaker 03 alcohol, most people kind of know that already. Like, they already know that sugar's not good for their teeth, or their waistline, or their risk of diabetes. Do we really need more external information? What I argue in this book is that we need not necessarily more external information, but more internal information. We need more self-awareness, more insight, more understanding of why do we go to certain behaviours when we're feeling stressed, for example? And that's the secret for me, it's understanding what is actually going on. Why do I keep going to this behaviour?
15:11 Speaker 03 Whether it's sugar, alcohol, pornography, too long on social media, online shopping, you know, whatever it might be, all of these kind of low-grade addictions we have in society, they're actually not as separate as we think. Often, they have the same roots cause. And this book is basically about trying to help people identify what are those root causes for them.
15:34 Dan Harris? One of the central ideas and motifs in the book is minimal reliance. Can you unpack that?
15:43 Speaker 03 Minimal reliance basically comes from this idea that the reason so many of us struggle in our lives and with our lives is because we're overly reliant on certain things in our external environment. Okay, so very simply, many people feel that they can be okay and feel okay if everything in their day goes okay, right? If their kids are nice to them in the morning, they get to school on time, their partner says nice words to them, there's no traffic on the way to work, their boss treats them nicely, they get the parking space they want, et cetera, et cetera. When things go well in our external world, we feel good.
16:24 Speaker 03 And of course, that's understandable, but many of us are overly reliant on those things happening in order to feel okay. So when something happens in our external world that is not okay, like someone cuts you up in the road on the way to work, there's traffic, your boss sends you a short email that you don't like, it really, really affects us internally and we don't feel good. So we are overly reliant on. Certain things in the external world in order to feel good. And I'm making the case in the book that what we're looking for is a state of minimal reliance. Not zero reliance, which we can get to later perhaps, but minimal reliance.
17:04 Speaker 03 You want to be less reliant or dependent on these things in your external world in order to feel good, because then you feel a sense of control over yourself. And that's going to help you make better decisions and better choices. But there are some other more big picture reliances. And those big picture reliances are basically form the nine chapters in this book, right? A reliance, a big reliance that I have seen, whether it be affect myself, my patients, members of the public, whatever. These releases affect many different people. And if we can cut that reliance or become minimally reliant on those things, we're going to be able to make changes that last.
17:49 Speaker 03 So the best way to describe it is with an example, I think. So the first chapter is called Trust Yourself. And that's all about this over reliance on experts. Now, I need to be very careful how I say this and be really clear because I am one of these so-called experts, right? So I'm a medical doctor with 23 years' experience. I've done my specialist exams, my primary care exams. I have an immunology degree. I'm a professor at Chester Medical School. Like, I have all these expert qualifications, but I can still say that I cannot know what is the right thing for any individual, right? And so let me just explain what I mean by that.
18:29 Speaker 03 We're living in a world, Dan, where there is a bombardment of information, right? All of us are consuming so much information these days from podcasts like yours or mine, books, you know, online blogs, whatever it might be. We're constantly consuming all this information. And what's often happening is that people are ending up being confused. So what I've often found on my podcast, Dan, is this, right? I may talk one week to an expert from Harvard Medical School.
19:02 Speaker 03 So they've got all the credentials and there was one chap, Dr Chris Palmer, fantastic doctor, psychiatrist at Harvard. And he came on to my show and he spoke about how he has found a ketogenic diet can be really, really helpful. For some people with severe mental health problems like bipolar disorder, right, or severe anxiety, right? And he will show you published studies and he'll present to you case studies of patients who have changed their life. And it all sounds great. And then I can also speak to someone two months later, let's say Professor Felice Jacka from Australia,
19:41 Speaker 03 who has shown that a whole food diet with lots of plants in can help reverse depression in some cases. And she'll present research findings and also patient case studies. And what I would often find is on Instagram, people will DM me and say, Dr Chastity, I'm a little bit confused, right? Both experts sound fantastic, but I don't know which expert to trust. And then I believe in 2025, that's the wrong question to be asking. It's, it shouldn't be which expert should I trust? The better question is why do I no longer trust myself? And I think this is a really, really key point.
20:24 Speaker 03 Both of those experts can be right for different people, but they're not going to be right for everyone. So a very simple thing I could say to someone is, listen, if both of those experts resonate with you and you like the data they are showing you and the evidence, why don't you try one of their diets for four weeks? And whilst you're trying it, pay attention to your energy, your mood, your guts, your bloating, your sleep, your relationships, right? Pay attention to those things and then try the other approach for four weeks. And whilst you're doing it, pay attention and you will know at the end of those four weeks, which one of those diets is suiting you better at that time in your life.
21:07 Speaker 03 Just to be clear, Dan, I'm not saying to ignore experts like me. I'm saying is the balance has gone so far whereby now what often happens is that we no longer trust ourselves. When we follow an expert's plan, whether it be about meditation or food or exercise or sleep and it's not working, we never think the plan is the problem. We think that we're the problem, that we failed in some way. And then guilt, shame, regret, these things start to come in. And then that's what gets in the way of making sustainable change. So that chatter is all about saying, hey, it's okay to listen to experts, but we now need to start trusting
21:49 Speaker 03 ourselves a little bit more, listening to our bodies. We need to understand that there's no one right approach that works for absolutely everybody. So I think this book is a little bit different from a lot of health books in that I'm really trying to put the control. I'm trying to give the control back to the reader and say, listen, you know, your body better than I do. Here are some guiding principles, but ultimately only you will know the right approach for you in your life.
22:19 Dan Harris? It's interesting because in some ways in this, in this aspect of the book, you're, you're cutting against the tide because I have a sense that people really want to be just told what to do. Because it's so confusing. I think there are a lot of voices in our industry and by our industry, I'm referring to not the medical profession because I'm not part of that, but like the health and wellness expert slash influencer industry. I see the people who often are really at the top of the game are very prescriptive because people really want to be told, just fucking tell me what to do. And what you're saying is actually trust yourself, which is a hard thing to do because everything about modern society militates us against self-awareness.
23:02 Speaker 03 Exactly.
23:02 Dan Harris? Which is required.
23:03 Speaker 03 Yeah, you're raising such a good point, right? Just because people want to be told what to do. It doesn't mean that that's the best thing for them. I agree. Okay, so what I've realised, and the truth is, this is the most, I couldn't have written this book even five years ago, because I would have been too scared of judgement. I was too insecure in who I was. Even with all my expertise, I was still, as I was for much of my life, dependent on external validation in order to feel good. Now, I'm not anymore. I've done a lot of the so-called inner work and processed my inner world. So I'm sitting before you now, Dan, at forty-seven years of age.
23:43 Speaker 03 I've never felt this good. I feel calm, I feel grounded, I generally feel peaceful inside. And I no longer need to be liked by the world around me. Right, chapter three in this book is about this over-reliance on being liked, right? I used to have that, and it affected a lot of my behaviour. Circling back to what you said for just a moment. If it was as simple as hearing from an expert, and they give us the prescription, and we follow it, and it changes our life, why is it that so many people are still sick? Right, we've got more expertise than ever before available to more and more people, yet at the same time,
24:24 Speaker 03 physical health is getting worse, and our mental health is getting worse across the society. So I thought, something's going on here. More knowledge is not equating to better health outcomes. Because we'd always think, oh, knowledge is power, all we need is more knowledge. Now, sure, I accept there are some external factors, like our food environment, and the toxic workplaces that many people have to go to, where they're chronically stressed and never get to switch off. I accept that. Those things are working against people. But actually, you will only make long-term change, like the change that people actually want, when it comes from deep within you. I have seen this time and time again with patients, Dan.
25:09 Speaker 03 Anybody can change for four weeks, or two months, or three months. Anyone can just go, right, I've had enough, that's it, now I'm losing weight, or I'm sick of, keep saying I'm going to meditate, that's it, I'm gonna meditate now, right? I'm gonna do it this year. But actually, we're not really wanting that for one month or two months. We're wanting it sustainably, and it will only happen when it comes from you. Like, Dan, you've got children, right? Like I do. One, one kid. Yeah, so you've got a child. I've got two children. Okay. One thing I've learnt, and I've also learnt this from my patients, is that nobody actually likes to be told what to do. Right. Kids don't like to be told what to do, but I don't think adults do. And so
25:52 Speaker 03 there's a section in this book where I write about the fact that I've never told a patient that they must give up smoking. Why not? Because most people will go, well, that's your job as a doctor. I said, no, it's not. My job as a doctor, if a patient comes in and asks me for my opinion, then my job is to tell them the impact smoking is having on their health. I say, well, I think smoking is the reason you're breathless and the reason, you know, you're struggling to sleep or whatever it might be. If at the end of that conversation, if I'm confident that patient has understood me and they really understand what I've said to them, if they then say to me, hey, Dr. Chast, you know, I understand what you're saying,
26:34 Speaker 03 but actually I get so much enjoyment out of smoking that I'm prepared to put up with those consequences. I've never thought it's my job, Dan, as a doctor, to tell him that he should stop. Like, he's another human being who I genuinely see as an equal. And I will go, I will accept that. Now, I will also say, throughout my career, I think I've had pretty good compliance with my patients because I never talk down to them. Like, I really don't subscribe to this old school paternalistic medical establishment type view where doctor knows best and we're going to tell the patient what to do. I'm sure some people can make that work. I never could. I've always seen this as an equal interaction.
27:18 Speaker 03 And when you behave like that with your patients, what often happens is they come back a few weeks later or a few months later. And I'll go, hey, Doc, you know, I know I said I didn't want to give up smoking, but I've been thinking about it. Actually, I think I do. Could you help me take the next steps? And it's something subtle that I've noticed time and time again. It's because I wasn't telling them. I didn't tell them what to do. I was just sharing information. They decide that it came from within them. And that's why a lot of these plans, these prescription plans, in my view, don't work in the long term. Because we still feel it's, oh, doctor's telling me what to do, the expert's telling me what to do. Which means at some point, we can discard it because it hasn't become a part of who
28:03 Speaker 03 we are. And I think that's the subtle difference. Did that make sense, Dan?
28:07 Dan Harris? It does make sense. There's abroad in the land and the general populace, in among your patients and among our listeners, although most people don't know it, there is a conflicting set of demands. On the one hand, on some level, we crave, just tell me what to do. And on the other level, we really don't want to be told what to do. And so that's why we'll get really excited about some plan that some shiny new expert has, but we won't ever actually get it into our molecules and execute on it in a long term way. We might do it for a little while, and maybe some of us will do it in a long term way. Those are the mutants who are really good at following instruction. But most of us will do it for a little while and then we'll fall off the wagon because
28:50 Dan Harris? we're missing the fundamental step, which is intrinsic motivation. We fully understand why we want to do, what we need to do, and how we ought to go about it. And that can make an abiding long-term habit.
29:05 Speaker 03 I completely agree, Dan. And another way I think about this is that every single behavior in our life either comes from the energy of love or the energy of fear. Now, I've been testing this out and really trying to get it clear in my head. Does this apply in every single case? And I genuinely believe that it does. So New Year's a prime example, right? So I believe a lot of New Year's resolutions, a lot of changes that often happen in January, February, March, the start of the year. Coming from an energy of fear, what do I mean by that? I don't feel good enough, I don't look good enough, I'm a loser.
29:45 Speaker 03 Like, I need to beat myself up now, I need to overcome basically how I feel about myself with these lifestyle choices that I'm now going to make. And we're pushing through, but the underlying energy is one of fear, I don't like who I am. But I'm afraid to show up and be seen in the world for who I truly am. So these lifestyle choices then try and camouflage that and try and overcome that. But actually, when your energy is one of love, that actually, you know what, I like the person I am, actually, and I I wanna do the best for who I am, right? I wanna be the best human being that I can, so I can be present with my children and my partner. So I can be a really good work colleague.
30:26 Speaker 03 It's a very different energy and those changes then tend to be sustainable. So let's take meditation as an example, right? Because I've had a checkered history with meditation over the years. So five or six years ago, when I still had this very vicious inner voice. You know, I think for much of my lifetime, I don't think I really liked myself. And I have kind of tried to unpick where this has come from, I have a very simplistic explanation, which I think works for me. But in essence, I didn't like who I was, really at my core level. I was a people pleaser, an excessive people pleaser. I feel today I'm a people pleaser in recovery.
31:07 Speaker 03 Because I felt that the only way I would get validation is by changing who I was. Right? So I became very good at changing who I was to get validation from other people. But that's sort of a very happy and calm and compassionate way to live. It certainly wasn't for me. So back then, this is my approach on January the first. Meditation, right? I know meditation is really good for me, I've seen the studies. It's gonna help me reduce activity in my amygdala, it's gonna help me focus better, it's gonna help me sleep better, right? I know with more and more external knowledge that meditation is good for me. This is the year I'm gonna rock out on meditation, right? So I start, January the first, 20 minutes.
31:51 Speaker 03 And I keep going and on January the 20th, let's say, I'll be a little bit busy, something will happen. I don't manage to do it. And then the negative voice starts, oh, you couldn't do it, could you? You're a loser. Yeah, you said it was going to be this year, but you just couldn't do it. You couldn't even get to the end of January. What happens then? That's the energy of fear, guilt, shame, regret, which means I don't continue. Meditation then becomes a pipe dream. It's something that I used to do and I no longer do. Whereas now, these days, genuinely, I meditate regularly, but not necessarily every day, right? I don't beat myself up anymore.
32:33 Speaker 03 I've realised that actually I'm a better human being when I meditate for 10 or 15 minutes first thing every morning. I'm more present with my children. I'm a better husband. I'm a better doctor. So I do it. And then on the odd day where I miss it, because life happens, I go, oh, wow, isn't that interesting? I missed it today and look, I was a bit more reactive. I wasn't quite as focused. Oh, you know what? Tomorrow, I must make sure I get back to that. It's a very different relationship with myself. And so the behaviour now sticks. Right, so we've got this idea. Yeah, I think I've had a great conversation with Kristin Neff on my podcast. I think you have as well, Dan, in the past. Yeah, yeah. And she'll tell us about self compassion and how people who are compassionate to themselves,
33:18 Speaker 03 they are the ones who stick to behaviours in the long term, actually. It's not the ones who beat themselves up. So these ideas about getting to the root cause of your behaviours, they're actually more important than getting the latest 21 day plan. Because the latest 21 day plan is more, again, there are some great ones out there. I'm not denigrating them, right? A lot of my friends have written some brilliant 21 day plans, right? So to be really clear, I'm not saying that you don't need that. Yes, you need external knowledge. But I would argue for most of us, what we need more than anything is more internal knowledge. And therefore, I believe the most important practice that anyone can do
34:00 Speaker 03 in this day and age is have a daily practice of solitude. Like a daily practice where you're not getting in more and more information from the outside, you're starting to tune in and listen. What is your body telling you? How are you feeling? Where is that tightness in your body? What is coming up for you? Are there relationships in your life that need a bit of attention? We don't realize Dan, if we wake up and the first thing we do is start consuming social media, emails, even if we're consuming good quality content, we're still consuming from the outside. And what I want people to take from this book is that, guys, your body is always sending you messages and signals, but if you never spend any time with yourself,
34:45 Speaker 03 you're never going to hear those messages.
34:48 Dan Harris? Yeah, I agree. And just to put a fine point on it, you're arguing that if we learn chapter one in this book, one of nine overreliances that you've identified, and chapter one is about this reliance on experts. If you don't learn to trust yourself, then it's going to be hard to make long-term change. And one way to learn to listen to yourself, which again, where very few of us are taught in a culture where we're constantly being bombarded by messages from the larger world, the larger society via social media, et cetera, et cetera. One way to get that self-awareness is meditation. So we can, okay, is this new diet I'm trying working for me? So we've covered that. We're not going to be able to make it to all nine of the chapters, but people should go read the book for themselves. But to the extent
35:33 Dan Harris? that we can, let's cover some more of them.
35:37 Dan Harris? Coming up, Dr. Chatterjee talks about barriers and solutions when it comes to long-term change, how to stop people pleasing, where to become a people pleaser in recovery, as he refers to himself, and some tips for neutralizing emotional discomfort and stress.
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36:32 Dan Harris? You mentioned Chapter Three is about this reliance on being liked and you talked about your own struggles with people pleasing. How does a reliance on being liked block us from making long-term change and what can we do about it?
36:48 Speaker 03 People who identify as people pleasers, which, you know, there's a lot of people in society, I'm sure there's many people listening now down to this show, who probably would go, "Yeah, I'm the excessive people pleaser." The problem with people who identify that and behave like that is they're constantly putting other people's needs before their own. So they tend to feel a lot of anger, resentment, when they're in the privacy of their own home because outwardly, they're always doing what everyone else wants them to do and they're coming across fantastically to everyone, but it's coming at a cost to themselves. So I say in the book, "The cost of being liked by everyone else is that you no longer like yourself," right? Very simplistically.
37:32 Speaker 03 And then you start to engage in all of these behaviors to compensate for the inner discomfort you feel because you're not living in alignment with who you really are. Again, let's just relate this to something I said earlier, to really, I really want these points to land for people. These behaviors that many of us struggle with, sugar, alcohol, online pornography, social media, doom scrolling, online shopping, whatever it might be. Often, the underlying reason behind that behaviour is the same in different people. Right. So one people pleaser may deal with their internal discomforts by drinking to excess in the evenings when they're at home.
38:15 Speaker 03 Because it numbs the discomfort that they're feeling within themselves. Someone else might do that by opening a tub of Haagen Dazs ice cream in the evening, right? When they're back at home. Someone else might do it on online pornography or whatever it might be. They're trying to get a relief from that internal discomfort. So that's why a reliance on being liked by other people, I should say, an over reliance. Because we are social beings. I'm not talking about behaving in a way that no one likes you and that you don't create those good relationships. No. And that's why the last chapter is the gift of reliance. And I talk about the importance of community and how actually the best way we serve those around us
38:57 Speaker 03 is to become minimally reliant, because then we're not needy on those people. We're actually complete in and of ourselves. And then we can be of real service to the people around us. So I think community is really, really important, but we engage better when we become minimally reliant. So how do we stop being a people pleaser and stop this over reliance from being liked? Well, again, it's like getting to the root cause, Dan, right? It's trying to get to, well, what is really causing this for me? Why am I unable to put up boundaries and put my own needs first when I need to? And so, you know, I'll try and summarize my story very quickly in case it resonates with any of your audience.
39:43 Speaker 03 My parents were Indian immigrants down to the UK. So my dad came in 1962 to the UK, mum, I think in 1972. And they came to create a better life, right? Dad came here to create a better life for his family, me, my brother, and his family back home in India. I remember as a child, Dan, coming home from school, maybe six years old, seven years old. Really excited, say, hey mum, dad, I got nineteen out of twenty in the test. And I can really clearly remember that mum and dad would never say, well done. They would say, what did you get wrong? Did you come first? So I said, no, no, I didn't come first, I came second. So who came first?
40:27 Speaker 03 Oh, right, okay. Their focus was on what I got wrong. Now, this is not about blame, right? Every situation in life, Dan, has multiple perspectives, right? So from mum and dad's perspective, I totally get it now. They're immigrants to the UK in the sixties and seventies. They're facing discrimination in their head. The way they avoid their children facing the struggles that they had to face was by excelling. Right, so if their child can become a straight A student and become a doctor or a lawyer, they're not going to have the problems that we faced. So it kind of makes sense from their perspective. The problem for me was that little Rangan takes on the belief at the age of six
41:12 Speaker 03 that, oh, I'm not really loved unless I'm top dog, unless I'm top of the class and I get a hundred percent. And it's only over the last few years I've realised just how toxic that belief was for me for much of my life, Dan. Most of my friends will tell you that Rangan is one of the most fiercely competitive people they know. I used to be, Dan. I'm not anymore because being competitive is not who I am, it's who I became. Right, so if you feel that the only way you get the validation or you're liked by the people around you, and as a young age by my parents, is by achieving well,
41:56 Speaker 03 well, it's pretty genius to develop the trace of competitiveness because that's going to drive you to push hard and work hard and stay up to one A and to make sure that you are top of the class and you are a straight A student, right? But it's not who I am, it's who I became. And as I, yes, with therapy for sure, but also with deep meditation and asking myself a few pertinent questions every day, which I still do. I've managed to change that. I understand where that came from. I actually don't blame my parents at all. I totally get where they were coming from. I think when people go and examine their past, on a slight offshoot here, Dan, one of the things that concerns me at the moment is that it's good that we have a greater awareness of how important
42:41 Speaker 03 our childhoods are. What happened in our childhood has a huge influence on our adult behaviours. But I think there's two stages to that process. There's the understanding what happens and why it happens. But then it's moving on and going, okay, that happens. Now, what am I going to do about it and move on? And I think a lot of people don't get to stage two. They get stuck in, yeah, well, you know, what can I do? This is how my parents brought me up. Of course, I'm this way. Like, I could have that. So I could say, yeah, I'm competitive. What can I do? I developed that as a five-year-old. But actually, I think that's very disempowering. You became that way for a reason, and I believe you
43:23 Speaker 03 can unbecome that way as well, once you become aware of what caused it. Sometimes it needs therapy, but it doesn't always, Dan. But the reason I say that is not to say therapy's not good. It is. If you have the right kind of therapy for you and the right therapist, I think it can be life-changing. But I have worked in so many different practices over my career, Dan. Many people, they don't have access to a therapist for a variety of reasons: cost, availability, time. So actually, I don't want people to read this book and go, oh, there's nothing I can do because I can't see a therapist. It's like, no, no, no. Even if you can't, there are still certain things that you can do. So I know I went on a slight
44:08 Speaker 03 offshoot there, Dan, but it's because I'm really passionate about helping people understand that actually, you develop this trait of people-pleasing for a reason. And there are many things you can do. One of the things you can do is to start putting up boundaries in your life. Now, boundaries can be a very scary word for people if they've never had them before. I grew up in a family that I don't think the word boundary even exists. Let alone, I didn't know what it meant, you know, everyone's business was everyone else's business. Right. Boundaries feel scary at first and actually you may get it wrong when you start. But that's the process of learning, right? If you've never put up boundaries before,
44:49 Speaker 03 actually, you're gonna have to start experimenting and going, okay, what happens if I say, no, I can't go to the social engagement, guys, because I'm knackered. And really need an early night. What happens if you do that? I tell you, Dan, I was in Barcelona last week giving a talk, right? And at the dinner that evening, this lady from Singapore was sitting next to me. And she said to me, it's interesting what you said in the talk. I completely agree. Actually, intermittent fasting for me has been like a game changer. I said, okay, so this is probably a lady who's about fifty four. And she said, when she does sixteen eight intermittent fasting, so eating within eight hours and having sixteen hours where she doesn't eat,
45:30 Speaker 03 which not every person finds helpful, but some people do. She did for her. Again, she had found what works for her, right? That's the key message. She said, I'm really good, but sometimes when I'm at social engagements with my colleagues and stuff, I end up eating because I don't want to seem like the odd one out. And then I always don't sleep well and I feel awful the next day. You know, what can I do in those situations? And I thought that point really beautifully illustrated the question you're asking me. She knows what she needs to do and when she does it, she feels great. But actually, she has an over reliance on being liked in certain situations.
46:10 Speaker 03 And so she starts to, she starts to create a void, I would say. It's another way you can look at behavior change, right? When you're not in alignment, so alignment being when your inner values and your external actions start to match up, right? 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. Actually, life becomes quite easy. I think that's one of the secrets to happiness. That's one of the secrets to behavior change in the long term. If you know that you feel better when you act a certain way, but because you wanna be accepted by other people, you don't act in that way.
46:50 Speaker 03 You create a void in who you are and it's that void where we start to fill the gap with our problematic behaviours. Right? Because we don't feel good because we know that in some way we betrayed who we are. And so I said to her, look, this is a really powerful learning opportunity for you. The only way you'll break free from that is to understand why is it that in this setting, you need to be accepted by these other people? What would happen if you said to them, hey, guys, look, I know we've got dinner. I'm just gonna take a sparkling water tonight. Actually, I actually feel really good. Wanna eat early. I wanna hang out with you guys. I wanna be here. But if I eat, I'm not gonna sleep so well. So if it's okay with you guys, I'm just gonna drink some sparkling water tonight.
47:35 Speaker 03 She goes, actually, I've never thought about doing that. I keep thinking that they're gonna judge me. I said, well, do you know that? Do you know that to be true? Well, no, I don't know that. I said, okay, well, why don't you next time, why don't you just try it? Right? Why don't you just try that and see what happens? And, you know, for her, I think she's gonna learn a lot about herself through that process because, again, I can give her answers if she was my patient. There's plenty more I could say to her. But, you know, we had a very short interaction over dinner, so I wanted to empower a little bit and say, try that and see what happens. And the truth is what you realize with a lot of these changes, Dan, is that
48:15 Speaker 03 usually the reason we're scared is because of an inner insecurity that we have about ourselves. Right? So we feel they're gonna judge us, but a lot of the time it's simply not true. And often their judgment is actually a reflection of their own insecurities about their own behaviour rather than yours.
48:34 Dan Harris? So you're comfortable now with people thinking you're an asshole or whatever it is? Like, I'm not, I don't think that, but I'm just saying, you, you really don't care anymore?
48:42 Speaker 03 Okay, yeah, it's a great question. Let me sort of try and articulate it with a bit more clarity. Of course I care what people think about me, right? I'm a human being. We are social animals, right? So it's a huge part of who we are. I'm not overly reliant on what people think about me to feel good about myself, right? There's a, there's a subtle difference, right? Okay, let's look at it another way. I, like you, Dan, have a public profile, right? So one of the things that we have to not put up with, one of the consequences in 2025 of having a public profile is that there's a lot of people who will comment on you on a daily basis. Is that fair to say?
49:28 Dan Harris? Yes, it is.
49:29 Speaker 03 Yeah, some of these comments will be really great. Some of these things will be not so great, okay? That's the cost of having a public profile in the modern age with social media and the internet. Now, 10 years ago, when I first started trying to articulate public health messages in public, what I realized is that criticism would really bother me. Like, I wouldn't sleep. When that Doctor in the House series came out in 2015, I remember the first episode came out, 99% of the feedback on Twitter was amazing. 1% was vicious negativity attacking me. I had never come across that before. I'd never had a TV show out before. I was just trying to help people, I improved their lives.
50:13 Speaker 03 My wife and I found that really, really difficult. And what I've realized on reflection is, you know, I would really like the positive comments. It would really make me feel good. But at the same time, the negative comments would equally bring me down. Whereas these days, I'm just a lot more even. The positive comments don't go to my head and artificially elevate how I feel about myself. But the negative comments don't really bring me down to those negative depths in the way They used to. I'm a lot more even because I'm not overly reliant. And it comes out of external the internal validation down. So for me, I feel I these days.
50:54 Speaker 03 I validate myself. I'm really clear on who I am and what my values are. And I've realized that the biggest question I have to ask myself each day before I go to bed is. Did you act today in accordance with your values? Because if I did, I cannot control what other people are going to say about me. And I have to act like this, otherwise I fall into my old patterns of people pleasing, which is. Changing who I am in order to be liked by others. That's my Achilles heel, like it is for many people. So I almost have to go the other way and go, no, no, I cannot change who I am in order to be liked by others.
51:36 Speaker 03 Let's look at it another way, Dan. Chatter five is one of my favorite chats in the book. It's called Take Less Offense. And it's about an over reliance on being right. And I'll explain some of the ideas in that chapter in just a second, but. If you need to be liked by everyone that you come across. You're actually setting yourself up for failure. There's eight billion people on the planet. Of course, not everyone is going to see the world in the same way as you. It's unrealistic. So we have to accept that actually. Some people will not see the world in the same way that we do. And so I think it's really important that we understand that it's okay to want to be liked by other people, but.
52:19 Speaker 03 Being liked by everyone, I think that's an unrealistic goal that is setting ourselves up for failure. And it actually comes from an insecurity that we have in ourselves. So that chapter, basically, because I think the idea when it speaks to this idea that we're just talking about here. I basically made the case that nothing in and of itself is inherently offensive. It can't be because if it was the external comment or thing that was offensive.
52:48 Speaker 03 All of us would take offence to the same thing. But the fact that we don't means that it's not that thing that's offensive. It's something within us that's been activated by that comment or that external event. And I think that's a key subtle point because a lot of the time we blame, coming back to what I said right at the start of this conversation, right? When you asked me about minimal reliance, a lot of the time we're blaming the world around us for our internal responses. Oh, that comment that I read on social media is the reason why I feel bad. And therefore I'm justified in having extra ice cream tonight or an extra glass of wine because that comment made me feel bad.
53:31 Speaker 03 But actually, what we don't realise is that we've given our power away to that external event when we feel like that. Once you realise that, no, it's not the comment, it's your interpretation of that comment, then actually life opens up, right? It really does. Dan, like, how long's your podcast been going for now? Is it seven, eight years? Yeah, eight years. Eight years, okay. Mine's would go for seven years, right? And we just passed episode 500. I would still say the most powerful conversation I've ever had on my show was with a lady called Edith Eager. Have you heard of Edith Eager? When I spoke to her a few years ago, she was 93 years old, Dan. And when she was 16, she was growing up in Eastern Europe. She was pretty excited that morning.
54:16 Speaker 03 She had a date with a boyfriend that night. She was wondering about what dress she was going to wear. Her family get a knock on the door and they all get put on a train to Auschwitz concentration camp. She gets there, within two hours of getting there, both her mother and father are murdered. Right, she's a 16-year-old girl. She gets to Auschwitz, her parents are murdered. One hour later, she is asked to dance for the senior prison guards in Auschwitz. So her parents have been murdered, they all know that she's a dancer. And so she has to dance for these older men, prison guards, right? And so there's a few things from that conversation, Dan, that have never, ever left me.
55:00 Speaker 03 The first thing is that Edith said to me, Dr. Chassey, I never forgot the last thing my mother said to me. She said, Edith, never forget, nobody can ever take from you the contents that you put inside your own mind. So she says to me, Dan, when I was in Auschwitz and dancing, I wasn't dancing in Auschwitz. In my mind, I was in Budapest Opera House. I had a beautiful dress on, there was a full house, the orchestra was playing. In my mind, it was a wonderful experience. And I thought, wow, that's pretty incredible to be able to do that after your parents have been murdered.
55:39 Speaker 03 Then she tells me while she was in Auschwitz, she started to see the prison guards as the prisoners. She said, in their mind, they weren't free. They weren't living the lives that they were here to live. They weren't happy, but in my mind, I was free. Which again, I thought, this is pretty incredible to be able to do that at the age of 16. But the final word she said to me, Dan, I feel I've been tattooed onto my heart and have really changed the trajectory of my life. And some of those ideas were the underpin many of the chapters in this book. She said to me, Dr. Chassey, I have lived in Auschwitz. And I can tell you the greatest prison you will ever live inside
56:24 Speaker 03 is the prison you create inside your own mind. And Dan, let me tell you, the penny dropped for me that day. I got it. I thought, oh my God, that's it. We all go around in the world expecting things to be a certain way. We make up stories about what that driver meant when they cut us up, what that person who knocked us in the supermarket meant, what that comment meant on social media, and we think that actually... Our internal response is down to those external events. No, it isn't. We get to choose our response in every single situation in life. And one of the reasons we cannot make changes that last is because we're overly reliant on the outside world.
57:08 Speaker 03 So just let me give you a really simple example to hopefully land this point with your audience. Let's say you drive to work. Okay, you're driving to work, you're running a little bit late and there's another car quickly comes in front of you, right, suddenly. Obviously, you don't like it. But many people think that because that happened, I'm justified now to go on this mental tirade, stupid driver, they need their eyes checked, they shouldn't have a licence, I can't believe they did that. Even though that driver can't hear us, right? Now, to be really clear, I'm not judging anyone. I used to do this, right? I used to get mad at situations like that. What I didn't realise is that I was creating emotional stress
57:54 Speaker 03 around an event that I had no control over, right? So what does that emotional stress do? And again, this is a central idea that underpins many of the chapters in this book, Dan. Emotional stress is not neutral. You will have to neutralise it in some way or another. So when you get to work, having generated all that angst and tension, you might need an extra coffee with sugar, you might need a chocolate bar from the vending machine, you might need an extra beer or wine at lunchtime or after work. You need to do something, engage in some kind of behaviour to neutralise the stress that you generated by the way you interacted with that situation.
58:37 Speaker 03 What Edith Eager has taught me is that, no, I have a choice there. I have a choice, I don't need to react like that. I could choose and now I do because I've practised enough and I'll share the exercise I do to help people get to this point. But I practise so, so much now that it's very rare that I react. If that happens, I'm like, oh, I wonder what's going on for that driver? Or maybe it's a father whose child was up with earache last night and they're exhausted and they're just trying to get to work. Or maybe it's a mum who's been late three times in the past two weeks and she's on a final warning and if she doesn't get to work on time, she's gonna lose her job, which is how she feeds her children and pays for the heating at home.
59:19 Speaker 03 The truth of that situation, Dan, actually doesn't matter for your inner wellbeing and your happiness. What matters is that, is that you put on what I call a happiness story onto that situation. Because what happens then is that you don't generate the emotional stress in the first place, and so you have no need for those compensatory behaviours afterwards. So bringing it back to alcohol and sugar, let's say, two very common things, often we're going to those things to neutralise emotional discomfort that we have created. So what I did for many years, Dan, once my children were in beds, I'd sit down with a journal and I'd ask myself, where did you get emotionally triggered today, Rangan?
1:00:03 Speaker 03 Okay, and I'd be like, ah, yeah, that email really bothered me when I got it. Okay, all right, why? Why did that email bother you? Oh, it reminded me of something my mum said to me when I was little, or reminded me of my last boss, or it made me not feel valued at work, or whatever it might be. And you start writing these things down. This is one of the most powerful exercises anyone can do because you are using your emotional triggers as your most powerful teacher. You're learning that actually it's never the external event, it's your internal response to that external event. So initially, you have to do this consciously, you know, in practice, and before you know
1:00:44 Speaker 03 it, Dan, you start to do unconsciously in the moment, right? It's so powerful because ultimately, when you can cultivate this inner calm in yourself, you actually have no need for all of these compensatory behaviours. And if you choose to have them, like alcohol or sugar, let's say, you're intentionally choosing to have them and enjoy them, rather than needing to have them as a consequence of your internal state, that's the key difference.
1:01:16 Dan Harris? Coming up, Dr. Chatterjee talks about the life is an escalator myth and our relationship with complaining, how to adapt to adversity without feeding your bad habits, and escaping the trap of busyness.
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1:02:12 Dan Harris? Let's keep going through some of the overreliances that you identify in the book. One that hit me, because I can see this operating in myself, is a reliance on things never going wrong. And you talk about this life is an escalator myth. Can you walk us through that?
1:02:31 Speaker 03 Yeah, again, I was going to say this is one of my favorites, but I said that about the last chats, but I think they're all my favorites. Right? This is a very, very personal book. I think a lot of us subscribe to the belief, the unconscious belief, that things in our life are constantly going to keep getting better. Right? If we do enough things with ourself and we exert enough control over our life, nothing's ever going to go wrong. And one way that you can tell if you are subscribing to this myth is to ask yourself, how much do you complain? It's a really simple way of asking yourself, like, how much do I complain in a day? And if you're not sure, ask someone close to you, how much do you complain? They might give you a slightly different answer, perhaps a more insightful answer. Because actually complaining...
1:03:18 Speaker 03 Or how much you complain is often a sign that you are surprised by the natural order of life. So the natural order of life is that things are going to go wrong. It's just going to happen, right? You're never going to go through life when things always go your way. But if you believe that they are always going to go your way, and then they don't, you start to feel hard done by when they don't, and that leads to a lot of compensatory behaviours. So business really understand this very, very well, right? So there's a concept in business called shrinkage. So in the UK, I believe that business retailers
1:03:59 Speaker 03 plan for 11 billion pounds worth of shrinkage every year. What is shrinkage? Let's say you're a supermarket. You can pretend in your head that no one's ever going to steal any of your food, and nothing's ever going to go off on the shelves, and then be constantly surprised when it happens. Or you can go, oh, actually, we know on average, we're going to lose this amount of stock each year to shoplifting and the food going off. So you factor it into the business plan. So all of these successful businesses, they're not surprised when people shoplift or their stock goes off. It's planned for and accounted in. And I'm making the case in that chat so that we don't look at our lives in the
1:04:43 Speaker 03 same way, and we should. So in that chat, so there's a very powerful story for a friend of mine, and this is quite an extreme version, right? But I think it proves the case, or it's a very good way of illustrating the point for people. I had a friend of mine who was a medical doctor, and she basically was the recipient of a negligence claim. Now, if you look at the statistics in the UK, on average, a medical doctor in the UK is going to be sued three to four times over the course of a 40-year career. And I imagine in America, that number is higher, right? Because I think we've actually learnt this from America, and it's come over to us.
1:05:24 Speaker 03 So you know that if you see enough patients over the course of your career, you are going to get sued at one point. It doesn't matter how good you are. You know, if you drive enough times, you're going to be involved in a crash at some point. It's going to happen statistically.
1:05:42 Speaker 03 The problem is when she was the recipient of this negligence claim, it totally threw her. And it's understandable. There was a cancer misdiagnosis that had nothing to do with her. She got dragged into it. And of course, it's scary and worrying and people are scared about their job and their licence. And yes, for the family, of course, it's understandable that they want answers as to why a diagnosis was missed. Right. But she started to drink excessively for two years while this was going on. She wrecked her health. She was chronically stressed. She didn't sleep. Now, if you look at it statistically, this is going to happen. Right. So we start, we need a mindset where we're going, actually, things are going to go wrong. How are we going to deal with things when they do inevitably go wrong?
1:06:27 Speaker 03 So how this played out for me, maybe three years ago. I've had elderly parent caring responsibilities for much of my adult life. I still do. I live five minutes away from my elderly mother. A few years ago, I think, I think this was three years ago. I went to sleep at night in my house. And the phone rang at about 10pm. I was already asleep and it was my mum's emergency alarm. She had triggered it. And the call centre had phoned me as the first point of contact, saying, your mother has fallen. She can't get up at home. Are you able to go round and help her? So I was, I drove round, you know, I was half asleep. I got up in my pyjamas, got in my car, drove round to mum's,
1:07:11 Speaker 03 sorted her out, got her back into bed, checked she was okay, settled her. Took me about an hour. And then I decided, okay, I think everything's okay. Mum, call me if there's any problems. I'm going back home. I reversed out of my mum's drive, straight into the parked car on the other side of the roads. Now, the older version of me, Dan, would have done this. Oh my god, I can't believe it. Typical, with all the stress I've got on with mum and work, now I've got to deal with insurance. You know, poor old me, this whole self pity story would have started. Now, you may say that's understandable. Yes, it's completely understandable, I'm just saying that there's a consequence of interacting with the world like that.
1:07:55 Speaker 03 The consequence of that is I feel sorry for myself. And then the next day, I engage in problematic behaviours to help me. Yeah, I might have an extra bit of sugar, an extra croissant, another glass of wine, whatever it might be. Because I'm trying to compensate for this internal discomfort that I feel. Whereas what I actually did, because I'd been practising, and I was really quite proud of myself when this happened, I thought, oh wow, things really are changing in your life, Rangan. I actually banged into that car and immediately I was like, oh, well, it could be worse. No one got hurt, I've got insurance. And you know what, Rangan, if you keep coming round at 11pm to see your mum when you're half asleep, it's bound to happen at some point.
1:08:39 Speaker 03 Now, it sounds like a very trivial thing, Dan, but that change in viewpoint has multiple downstream consequences. By not telling myself that self pity story, I'm just much more able and empowered the following day. I don't start engaging in these problematic behaviours because they are a consequence of the way I interacted with that adverse event. These adverse events are going to happen and you can train yourself to actually look at them differently. I've had many, you know, female patients over the years who are mothers. And I find this as well, actually, like I used to, if I was going to pick my children up from school at, let's say, 3.30.
1:09:20 Speaker 03 Sometimes if I was not working that afternoon, you nip to the supermarket on the way to make sure you've got some food for dinner. You quickly want to get in and out and pick your children up and get home. But sometimes, there's an elderly lady in front of you who's having a nice chat with the checkout assistant and you're in a hurry. But actually, they're not in a hurry and they're chatting away. If you notice, a lot of the time, we're creating that internal stress there. Oh, my God, I wish you'd stop talking soon, you know, keep looking at your watch, keep checking. I've been that person before, Dan, right? So I'm not judging, I'm simply saying you are creating all of this frankly unnecessary stress, right?
1:10:03 Speaker 03 If you go to the supermarket late enough times on the way to pick up your kids, at some point, there will be an elderly lady there chatting to the supermarket attendant. It's going to happen. So there's loads of exercises in the book to help you catch those moments and not beat yourself up, but go, oh, wow, yeah, I'm creating stress here. What would happen if I just go with it and say, isn't it nice that this lady is having a chat? Maybe that's the only chat she's had all day with another human being. When you start interacting with a world like this, Dan, I promise you, your behaviors naturally start to change. And again, a really practical exercise for people to really land this is,
1:10:44 Speaker 03 if you find yourself complaining, right, about anything, I want you to do one of two things. Either turn that complaint into an action, i.e. you're going to do something about it, or turn that complaint into a moment of gratitude. It's a very simple exercise, Dan, that it really transforms your relationship with complaining. You either do something about it, or you actually reframe that whole situation in your mind. And I say in the book that basically when you choose gratitude, you stop thinking like a victim. When you choose action, you stop acting like a victim. And I think it's a very simple, practical technique that can have profound benefits for us.
1:11:29 Dan Harris? I like that. I was also thinking about this clip from Jaco Willink. Actually, I've never had him on the show, but I think he's a former military guy. And in the clip, he, he talks about how anytime anything bad happens to him, anytime anything quote unquote bad happens to him, he says, good. And he's just really tried to create this habit of like, oh, we just got a huge bill that is derailing our finances. Good. I got in a car accident. Good. Because it's all, this is the way life is, and these are all opportunities to train in dealing with adversity.
1:11:59 Speaker 03 And I love that. And what that shows me, Dan. When we think about habits, right, we tend to think about, oh, I want to create a meditation habit. I want to work out regularly, whatever it might be. But we don't so much think about mindset habits in the same way. Like what you just illustrated from Jocko is, oh, he's training himself to have a different mindset habit. When these bad things happen, I'm gonna initially through conscious effort, but with enough practice, it becomes your default response. You go, oh, wow, there it is. So you're not surprised then anymore. And you create that internal stress. You're like, oh, there it was. It was bound to happen. Great. What am I going to learn from this situation? So yeah, thank you for sharing that. I think it's a great example.
1:12:42 Dan Harris? Do you think we have time to sneak in one more of these chapters? I'm particularly interested on your notes on relying on busyness.
1:12:50 Speaker 03 Yeah, let's get it in because it's probably one of the most important ones. How many of us these days are overworking? In the UK, 88% of office workers have said in a survey that they've experienced some degree of burnout in the past two years. I mean, I don't know what that says about the state of society, but it's pretty profound, right? So why are we so busy all the time? Well, there's many reasons. Of course, some people have to do certain things. But a lot of us are overly doing things because we have this, we have this need to feel important, Dan. So I spoke to this wonderful chap, Will Store, who wrote the book, The Status Game, on my podcast about a year ago. And in that book, Will makes
1:13:33 Speaker 03 the case, from the scientific evidence, that status is a universal driver in all humans, right? And when we say status, we're not talking about the amount of money you earn, the car you drive, or the amount of followers you have online. No, status is actually the feeling of being of value to other people. Right? We have a need as a human being to feel that we are of value. Now, in the old hunter gatherer tribe days, it was going to be pretty obvious to us on a daily basis, what was the value that we had. We were, oh, you know, I'm the forager. I get the sweet potatoes. Oh, I'm the one who goes out and hunts. I'm the one who looks after the tribe at night to make sure we're safe. Whatever
1:14:15 Speaker 03 it might be, you could see very clearly the value that you offer to the people around you. What I think what's happened in modern society is many of us have moved away from our tribes and our communities for work opportunities, for better financial opportunities, whatever it might be. And of course, there are benefits of doing that. But one of the downsides is that often we're not getting that sense of value anymore apart from through our work. So a lot of the time, this feeling of busyness comes from, I want to feel that I'm worthy, that I actually provide value for people, which is one of the reasons that it drives us to work so hard. Now, I explore that idea in depth in that chapter, but in essence,
1:15:00 Speaker 03 many of us are overly busy, also because we haven't taken the time to truly understand what our real priorities are. In the interest of time, let me give you a very simple question that we can ask ourselves each day that really helps us with this. So I ask myself three questions every morning. The second question I ask myself is, what is the most important thing I have to do today? And it's a deceptively simple question, Dan. In fact, I'm going to say something, maybe it's a little bold. If anyone listening to this conversation takes nothing else apart from this question, I pretty much guarantee it's
1:15:42 Speaker 03 going to change the way that they experience life. Do it for seven days and you will start to feel a difference. So why this question is so powerful is because it forces you to make a decision each morning in a world where our to-do lists are never done, right? You could basically complete your email inbox, Dan, and then take a break to make a cup of coffee in your kitchen. In that time, you could have received another 20 emails. There's nothing you can do about that, right? So the problem for many of us is that we're waiting to do the truly important things in life, you know, when all the other things in our life are done, but those things are never done. So this question forces you to make a decision each morning, right? And I'll give you some examples of how this might go.
1:16:26 Speaker 03 Dan, I don't know if you know this or not, but when the word priority came into the English language in the 1500s, it only existed as a singular word. You couldn't have multiple priorities. You could only ever have one priority. But now we're all struggling with our 10 priorities each day that we have to get done. So this question is what I call in the book, it's the anti-business question. And so for me, a typical week will look like, I don't know, on a Monday morning, it might be something work related. Two weeks ago, I went to America to do some interviews for this book and I flew on the Thursday. So I remember on the Monday morning, because this book's out, I had an article I had to send to my publisher Penguin.
1:17:08 Speaker 03 So that day, so the most important thing I had to do is finish that article and send it to Penguin. It doesn't mean my other work wasn't important or that my relationship with my wife and kids wasn't important. It meant on that day, that's the focus. If I get that done, that day is a win. On the Tuesday, I know my wife was away the previous weekend. I was going to be in America for 10 days away. I thought, actually, the most important thing I have to do today is make sure when the kids are in bed, that I spend some quality time with my wife, right? In the day, I'd gotten with my work, I did all my things, but the focus was the most important thing is I spent some time with my wife tonight. On the Wednesday, I was working from home and I remember thinking, I'm not going to see the kids for a couple of weeks now because I'm going to be travelling for work.
1:17:52 Speaker 03 The most important thing I have to do today is at 4:30pm, when they walk through the door from school, I need to make sure my laptop is shut, my phone is in a different room so that I can be fully present to listen to what they have to tell me. Dan, these things sound really, really simple and they are, but they're very, very powerful. I promise you, if someone, as I say, if that's all they take from this, they just answer that question for seven days. That means after seven days, you will have done seven really important things, things that you have specified are important, not the world around you, you. Do it for 30 days, I promise your life will be transformed.
1:18:35 Speaker 03 It's one of my favorite questions I ask myself every single day. Some days it will be, today I must break at lunch and go for a 30 minute walk. It's these simple things that when you do them consistently, they change your experience of life. They make it so that you can actually make these changes that last in the long term. And honestly, Dan, the book is full of practical tips just like that. I know a lot of this conversation was quite big picture and philosophical, but I kind of think that's important to really land this idea that we control a lot of the narrative of our lives in our minds. In fact, Dan, I've really come to the conclusion that life is simply a set of experiences.
1:19:19 Speaker 03 And it's the story that we put onto those experiences that ultimately determines the quality of our life.
1:19:27 Dan Harris? Just in closing here, we've talked about the book quite a bit, but can you just remind everybody of the name of the book? And also the names of your other books, to the extent that you can recall all of them on demand? And, and the name of your podcast? Basically, I just want you to plug mercilessly so that people who want to get more from you can do so.
1:19:46 Speaker 03 Sure. Well, Dan, first of all, again, thank you for having me on the show. I've been a fan of your show for years. It's a real honor to come on. I think you're doing wonderful work in helping people live these happier lives, which is amazing. My new book is called Make Change That Lasts. Nine Simple Ways to Break Free From the Habits That Hold You Back. It's my sixth book. I genuinely believe it's my best and most original book and most transformative book for people. So if they're interested, it's out in a paperback ebook, also as an audiobook, which I narrate. I know a lot of people ask who narrates the audiobook. I do my own audiobooks. And I guess, yes, there are other books. I guess your audience might like my previous book was my fifth one was called Happy Mind, Happy Life. I break down happiness and give my three ingredients of happiness within that.
1:20:30 Speaker 03 Alignment, contentment and control. So I think your audience may like that as well. And I guess there's my weekly podcast, Feel Better Live More. Every Wednesday, a new conversation drops on Apple, Spotify and YouTube. So if people are interested, those are the places they can check me out.
1:20:48 Dan Harris? Awesome. Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, thank you very much for doing this. Really, really fun to meet you. Yeah, you too, Dan. Thank you.
1:20:56 Dan Harris? Thanks again to Dr. Chatterjee. Great to talk to him. As I said at the beginning, this is yet another one of those episodes that is just packed with practical advice. So if you want a cheat sheet, which sums up all of the key takeaways and also comes with a full transcript, you can sign up at danharris.com. We're doing lots of cool stuff over there, including live Ask Me Anything sessions and much more. So go check it out. I would appreciate it. Before I go, just want to thank everybody who worked so hard to make this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our production manager. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.
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Previous Buddhist Strategies For Reducing Everyday Addictions (To Your Phone, Food, Booze, And More) | Sister Dang Nghiem Next The Science of Emotion Regulation: How It Impacts Health, Performance, and Relationships. | Ethan Kross Page updated November 4, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
