BONUS | Seeking External Validation is RUINING Your Life - Dr. Rangan Chatterjee

Every time you chase approval, you trade a piece of who you really are. Today's bonus episode is a clip from Dr. Rangan Chatterjee's episode on The Daily Stoic Podcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMg8KgzD8DM. Dr. Rangan Chatterjee is a physician, author, TV presenter and podcast host of Feel Better Live More https://drchatterjee.com/podcast-episodes/where he talks with leading health experts who offer easy health life-hacks, expert advice and debunk common health myths. Be sure to check out Dr. Rangan Chatterjee’s latest book Make Change That Lasts https://drchatterjee.com/books/make-change-that-lasts/ and grab signed copies of his other books: Feel Better in 5 https://www.thepaintedporch.com/search?type=product&q=chatterjee*, Feel Great Lose Weight https://www.thepaintedporch.com/search?type=product&q=chatterjee*, and Happy Mind, Happy Life https://www.thepaintedporch.com/search?type=product&q=chatterjee* at The Painted Porch. https://www.thepaintedporch.com/search?type=product&q=chatterjee* You can follow Dr. Rangan on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/drchatterjee/?hl=en @DrChatterjee, on X @Dr. ChatterjeeUK https://x.com/drchatterjeeuk?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor, and on YouTube @DrChatterjeeRangan https://www.youtube.com/@DrChatterjeeRangan 🎥 Watch Dr. Rangan Chatterjee https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMg8KgzD8DM’s FULL episode https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMg8KgzD8DM here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMg8KgzD8DM 📖Wisdom Takes Work https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work by Ryan Holiday is out NOW! Grab a copy here:https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work 👉 Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing toThe Daily Stoic Premium https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content:https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ 🎥 Watch the video episodes onThe Daily Stoic YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos:https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos 🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast onInstagram https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast/?hl=en:https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast ✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email athttps://dailystoic.com/dailyemail 🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store:https://store.dailystoic.com/ 📱 Follow us: Instagram https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/,Twitter https://twitter.com/dailystoic,YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic,TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@daily_stoic?lang=en, andFacebook https://www.facebook.com/dailystoic See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic-inspired meditation, designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women, help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit dailystoic.com.

• 0:56Rangan Chatterjee?

  I know in this kind of online influencer, author, podcast world, I know full well that some people are literally choosing their guests based upon how they're going to perform on YouTube.

• 1:12Ryan Holiday?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:13Rangan Chatterjee?

  And I try to not judge anymore. It's one thing that I've realized in my life. It doesn't help me, right? So I just observe. And I'm like, oh, that's interesting. Choosing guests like that is going to have a certain outcome. There's going to be a consequence. The question for that individual or those individuals is, am I happy with that consequence? Am I happy with that outcome? And for me, I've realized, no, if I only choose based upon how it's going to perform, then I'm kind of losing my soul along the way.

• 1:41Ryan Holiday?

  Totally.

• 1:41Rangan Chatterjee?

  And I'm, you know, I was with a mutual friend of ours, Rich Roll, last week, and we were chatting about the same thing, about how do we go about choosing the guests who we want to speak to? And this actually, there was, it's not just for people who've got big audiences, right? We all have a circle of influence in our lives. It's how you interact in everyday life. How, how do you make choices? You know, in my, in my previous book, I had this framework for happiness. And I said, the three ingredients to happiness: alignment, contentment, and control.

• 2:15Rangan Chatterjee?

  Each one of those is not enough in isolation. They're all important and you need balance between those three. And I think what we're talking about speaks to that alignment piece, right? Which is, when I, when I say alignment, I mean, when the person who you really are on the inside and the person who you are being on the outside are one and the same. So when your inner values and your external actions start to match up more and more. I think at any point in our life, when we start to create a void there and a gap between who we are and who we are being in the world, that will come to bite you at some point. I really, I really believe in that void that we create, there's a fracture internally.

• 2:58Rangan Chatterjee?

  And I believe, having been a doctor for 23 years, that a lot of the problems that we see to do with, let's say, our lifestyle and the habits that we're trying to change. I actually think that if you go to the root cause, when there's that internal fracture in who you are, you will put in things like sugar and alcohol and online scrolling for three hours or pornography, whatever it is, it's there.

• 3:23Ryan Holiday?

  In the cracks.

• 3:23Rangan Chatterjee?

  To fill that hole.

• 3:25Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I, in my first book, I, I was, I riffed a little bit on this word, um, disintegrated. So when we think, when, when you hear the word disintegrated in English, you think it means like coming apart, right? Like it disintegrated upon entering the earth's atmosphere.

• 3:40Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 3:41Ryan Holiday?

  But like, if you think about it more as disintegrated, like not integrated.

• 3:45Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 3:46Ryan Holiday?

  Uh, I, I find that's the state that a lot of people exist in. So you have different parts of yourself and they're not integrated with each other. So you might have a set of values, like this is how I was in my twenties. You have a set of values, you have what you think is important, who you want to be. And then you have your job, which is maybe in an industry, or it's being done in a way, or it's forcing you to perform in a way that is not in, those things are not integrated, right? The other word for this is compartmentalization. But you can't really compartmentalize, right? You just have these different things and eventually they kind of, they find some way to conflict or you have to find some way to reconcile them. And so I think a lot of people, yeah, particularly in something like, uh, sort of the internet

• 4:31Ryan Holiday?

  ecosystem where, where you're like.

• 4:35Ryan Holiday?

  If I have this person on, it will get a lot of engagement. It might not be true, it might be bad for the world. They might be a crazy person who's spreading a harmful message, but I have to get a certain. So, so I think you see that. And then, and then what happens is those people tend to spiral because they, they have that person on. They engage with this sort of energy and it does so well that it becomes harder and harder for them not to do more and more of that. And then you kind of watch that person almost get radicalized by the

• 5:03Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 5:04Ryan Holiday?

  The people they bring into the circle.

• 5:05Rangan Chatterjee?

  And we see it. And, and so, you know, I used to be driven a lot by external validation as a kid, as a teenager in my twenties. And over the last five or 10 years, I've really changed that by intentionally, you know, doing daily practices to change how I show up in the world, to change how I see myself, to, to change my external actions. And I kind of feel that a lot of us, because we have this reliance, this over reliance on being liked by other people. We start to change who we are in order to be accepted by others. But that's very, very dangerous because, and, and I think the online world magnifies this to a great degree. You can change who you are and get validation.

• 5:50Rangan Chatterjee?

  So then you start performing in life rather than living authentically. You perform

• 5:55Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 5:56Rangan Chatterjee?

  And you get rewarded for that performance. So you keep doing that. But again, you're creating this internal void. And I think it's better, the truth is, it's better to be yourself and not be liked by some people, but be authentic to yourself in the long term. And frankly, in the short term, you're going to feel better. You're going to find there's a contentment, there's a peace. And in terms of like this idea of making changes that actually last, I think it's going to be much more likely when you're actually becoming much more aligned with who you are.

• 6:29Ryan Holiday?

  I mean, the thing about this with, with this idea of virtue, like we tend to think of virtue or who we are as this, this thing. It's like, I'm a good person, I'm generous person, I'm, you know.

• 6:44Ryan Holiday?

  And whatever. We think it's this thing that we are as opposed to this thing that we do. Exactly. Right? And, and Aristotle was very clear that virtue was an action, not like a state of being, that it's a, it's a verb and not a noun. Love it. And, and I, so, so people will say, well, I'm a good person, but you know, this is what I do professionally, or, uh, this is what I believe, but I'm going to engage with or interact or platform all these things that I don't really believe. That's not how it works. As you're trafficking in this stuff, as you're engaging in, as you're doing this thing, because it's what the algorithm wants, or what you think your boss wants, or just how this industry operates. You are becoming that thing and you're becoming not the thing that you see yourself as or believe that you are,

• 7:28Ryan Holiday?

  because you're not doing that thing. And so the idea is like, if you want to be something, if you want to see yourself a certain way, it, it has to be rooted in the actions that you take the day to day. And it's which the good news is, it means you can change positively also. You can just start doing that thing. It's like not faking it till you make it. It's bringing it into being by doing it.

• 7:53Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple of years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please spread the word. Tell people about it. And this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you.