Dr Rupy: Rangan, I think a lot of people go into the new year, right, thinking about habits that they want to, they want to make, new routines, whether it's being kinder to themselves, new diets. But your book, I think changes that, it flips it on its head. And instead, like the subtitle suggests, it's about breaking free from the habits that hold us back. And I wonder if we could start off this conversation by unpacking that first as a way to explain why people struggle to make these changes that last.
Rangan: Yeah, look, this is the time of year, Rupy, where for very good reason, we think, okay, new year, what am I going to do differently this year? How will I be healthier? How will I be happier? And we're always thinking of what kind of habits we can add in, which I think can have value for some people. But I think we also have to recognise that many of us, despite trying our very best each year in January, often we don't manage to make those changes stick in the long term. And you and me, Rupy, we've been doctors for many, many years, right? It's not that people don't want to be healthier. Right, they do. They really, really want to have more energy, have more vitality, have better relationships. They want all of these things. So it's not that they're not trying hard enough. In my view, the reason why we cannot, or many of us cannot make changes that last, is because we're focusing on the wrong things. So when we think about habits, you mentioned a new diet, or I don't know, a meditation practice, or a new thing that I can do. But actually, I think we also need to think about our mindset habits, and we're not thinking about those things enough, right? Because every single behaviour we engage in serves a role in our life. Too often, we try and change the behaviour without understanding the role that that behaviour actually plays in our lives. So very simply, let me give an example which I think a lot of people can resonate with, alcohol. Many people are constantly trying to re-evaluate their relationship with alcohol. So at this time of year, many people are trying to cut back or maybe they'll stop for 30 days to go, I, you know, I drank too much at Christmas and New Year. That's it. I'm sorting this. But here's the problem, right? If you have a lot of stress in your life, and the reason you're consuming alcohol is to help you reduce that stress, like it is for so many people, then you can go for 30 days without drinking any alcohol. And I'm not saying there's no benefit to doing that. You may learn things about yourself, but the truth is many people end up back to where they started within a few weeks of those 30 days finishing. Why? Because if alcohol is your way of coping with stress, then you will always revert back unless one of two things have happened. Number one, either the stress in your life has had to go down. If you have less stress, you have less of a need to engage in drinking alcohol, or that much alcohol, right? So that's one thing that could happen. But if that hasn't happened, the other thing you need is to find an alternative behaviour to alcohol to actually deal with that stress. And I think it sounds quite obvious when I put it like that, but I don't think we often think about our behaviours like that. We're so focused on the behaviour without understanding what's the role of that behaviour? What's the energy behind that behaviour? So that's one way that I look at habit change, one reason I think that people can't make changes that last. But then related to that is this other big topic that I think we're really missing in health and wellness. We're trying to give people more and more information about what to do. You know, you need to eat like this, you need to do this, right? But we're not helping people understand why they do those things in the first place. And I've realised after 23 years of being a medical doctor now, that most of our behaviours are driven by our beliefs. If you don't change your beliefs, you will never change those behaviours in the long term. So the central philosophy in this new book of mine is to help people understand that at a really, really core level. And the kind of underlying philosophy that that that sort of goes throughout the entire book, and which I believe underpins successful behaviour change is what I call a state of minimal reliance. I think it's a very new term, but I think it's a very, very helpful term. And minimal reliance is basically this idea that actually many of us, dare I say it, most of us, are overly reliant on things in our outside world in order to feel good. Right, so let me make this super easy for people to understand. A lot of us can feel great and internally calm and engage in good behaviours if everything in our life goes the way that we want it to.
Dr Rupy: I'm just like that.
Rangan: You're just like that, right? So when you get the right amount of sleep, when your, when your kid, when your baby sleeps through the night, right, which I don't think you've had yet. Right? When your partner's nice to you, when your children have got ready for school on time, when there's no traffic on the way to work, when your boss sends you nice emails and your email inbox is manageable. Oh, when those things happen, yeah, sure. I feel good and I can engage in my behaviours, right? No problem. But that's not realistic, right? Life is not going to be like that every day. There are going to be times when despite you leaving on time, there is going to be traffic on the way to work, right? And you are going to be late. But what we don't realise is that we we're overly reliant on things in our outside world going a particular way in order to feel good. And when they don't go the way that we want them to, we don't feel good and then we engage in behaviours like sugar or alcohol or doom scrolling or whatever it might be, to try and deal with that emotional discomfort that we have created because of that reliance. Does that make sense, Rupy?
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Rangan: I think it's quite a new way for people to look at their behaviours and their habits. And I really, I really tried hard because I like you, Rupy, really want to help people live healthier and happier lives, right? But what I've realised over the years is that it's not just more information that people need, right? They need a real understanding of themselves. And, you know, I start off this book with a, I think a very powerful case study, which perhaps people can resonate with, right?
Dr Rupy: I was going to ask you about that case study actually because I think some people listening to this might think to themselves, okay, I get it. Beliefs will influence my actions. But what if I already have control of my beliefs? Let's say, what if I already have the knowledge that, for example, sugar is bad for me. I know that I should be eating less ultra-processed foods. I understand the information and the mechanisms behind why the overconsumption of sugar in my diet is leading to these downstream effects. It's putting me at high risk, but I still can't break that habit. Is that what we mean by belief? Or is there something further upstream that is going on that I need to understand to make those changes?
Rangan: Yeah, it's a bit of both. So let me tell you the story, or let me share that with your audience, and then let me kind of unpick it as to how that fits in with reliance, okay? And this idea that I'm talking about, about minimal reliance. So, I had a GP friend of mine who a few years ago, I got a text in the week. I hadn't heard from her in ages and she said, hey, listen, Rangan, something's come up, can we have a chat? And it was quite unusual to get a message like that. So I said, yeah, sure, no problem. So we met up at the weekend and she told me about a patient consultation she'd had in the week. So this friend of mine was a real expert in type two diabetes, okay? She knew everything. She'd always be sending me on email the latest research papers with her own informed commentary on what she thought about it, right? So she's a real expert, she knew everything that there was to know. And she had a patient that week who was a newly diagnosed type two diabetic. And so she was going through the results and explaining to the patient about the damage that too many ultra-processed foods or excess sugar intake over a period of time can have on his body and his risk of type two diabetes. And at one point he just said, hey, doc, can I just stop you there? Why should I listen to you? You're fatter than I am. Now, I understand that many of us will think that's a little bit inappropriate in a doctor-patient consultation, but that's not the point I'm trying to make here. Whether we think it's appropriate or not, that's actually going off the issue that I'm trying to raise awareness of. When I met my friend, she said, it was really hard to hear that, but you know what, Rangan, my patient was absolutely right. I actually was fatter than my patient. And what that patient didn't know is that while I was counselling him on the dangers of too much sugar and ultra-processed foods, in my drawer underneath my desk, I had a big packet of Cadbury's giant buttons. And I started the book with this story to illustrate what I think is one of the most important points in this book and what I want to share with the public with all the experience I have today, which is this. Knowledge in and of itself is not enough. We're living, Rupy, in a world now where we're being bombarded with information. I sometimes sit back and go, this is really interesting. We've got more health information out there than we've ever had. More health podcasts like yours or mine, right? More blogs, more books, more health and wellness awareness. Yet despite all this external knowledge, our physical health is declining, our mental health is declining. Everyone says knowledge is power. All we need is more knowledge. Well, many of us are getting the knowledge, but we're not able to convert it into action. Why? And the case I'm trying to make is that for many of us, and I would argue, Rupy, that for most of the people who listen to your podcast each week, I'm guessing most of them already know that too many ultra-processed foods or too much sugar is probably not helping them with their health. I think a lot of them already know this. There's an impact on their teeth, on their liver, on their gut microbiome, etc, etc. So the question is, if you know that information, why are you unable to put it into practice? And I think what we need instead of more external knowledge, and external knowledge is important. I'm not saying it's not important. I'm saying we also need more internal knowledge. We need to develop our own insight and our own self-awareness. Why is it that despite knowing some of this information, we're unable to put it into practice in our lives?
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. And so using that same example of your GP colleague, how did she work through going further upstream to figure out why, despite the knowledge, despite the awareness of her own sugar intake, and obviously the deep expertise within type two diabetes, was she still not able to free herself from that habit?
Rangan: Because she had external knowledge, but not internal knowledge. And that's the key difference, right? She knew with her logical brain what she had to do, but internally, she didn't have the self-awareness of why she would engage in those behaviours. So the whole case is illustrated in the book, but in essence, for her, she had an over-reliance on being liked by others, right? So chapter three in the book is, is called, be yourself, and it's about this over-reliance on being liked. Let me just briefly explain what I what I mean by these over-reliances. I've already mentioned how some of us, or many of us need everything to go well in our life, and then we can feel good, and then engage in decent behaviours, right? But there are also these big picture reliances, or what I call these big picture beliefs that drive our behaviour. So one of those kind of big picture ideas is that if you are overly reliant on being liked by other people, now I accept we're social beings. I'm not saying we we're going to get rid of this need to actually get on with the world around us, but there's a sweet spot, right? You can be overly reliant on that. You can be someone who is a people pleaser, for example, like she was, like I used to be. I'm today a people pleaser in recovery. I've recognised where that pattern has come from, which is in essence, I felt as a young boy that I had to change who I was in order to receive love and validation. So you get very good at changing who you are, right? So you're so keen to be liked by others, you don't even know what you like yourself anymore. That was me, and I've been very, very open in this book about some of my challenges with that and how it didn't lead to decent health and sort of inner contentment, right? So my my GP friends basically, I helped her realise, and we spent a bit of time talking about this, and it was all came down to her childhood for her, that she had a period of bullying at the school that she went to. She was always trying to fit in since then with the people around her. And actually, she was unable to speak up for herself in her GP practice. Everyone would always lean on her. She'd be the one who'd pick up the slack. If people were off sick, she'd fill in, and she would never complain, ever. She was the really nice one to everyone. Rupy, I imagine you like me have seen many patients like that, many female patients like that, right? Who suppress their own needs to make sure that they're doing what they need to for everyone around her. But for her, that was toxic because actually she was never being herself. She would never say anything to anyone at work. She'd come home and moan to her husband, but when she was at work, oh, she'd all be nice and be this people pleaser. Ultimately, that's where she needs to go to change her behaviours for good because she has. She no longer overconsumes sugar, but it wasn't more external knowledge. She realised that actually when she would go to those Cadbury's buttons, when she was at work, was actually when actually she'd suppressed herself at work. She'd just did what everyone else wanted. She took it, oh, don't worry, I'll do those blood results, or don't worry, I'll see the extra patients, right? I bet you and me have had traits like that as well before, right? Because we we like to be nice people who behave well in front of others and do things for others. But she realised because I said, hey, every time you go to those buttons, right, in your drawer, just pause for a moment. Just pause before you do it, ask yourself what's going on. What are you really feeling? Is it physical hunger or is it emotional hunger? And I kid you not, Rupy, by doing that regularly, she was like, oh, wow. I keep going to that when I don't feel good. I'm not actually hungry. It's because something has happened at work, or I feel again, I've I've been taken advantage of, right? So you can change these patterns very quickly, actually. We, you know, we like to go, oh, these things are really hard to break. They're not as hard as we think, right? I think last time I came on your show, Rupy, I explained how I was competitive for much of my life, right? And a lot of my good friends who you know very well would say Rangan is one of the most competitive people we know. But I'm not competitive anymore because competitiveness was a trait I developed as a consequence of my childhood. And when I became aware of that, I've unpicked the layers and I'm not competitive anymore. It wasn't who I was, it was who I became. And I know these are quite some some big concepts for people to think about, but I think it's urgent that people start looking at their lives in this way. Because otherwise, we keep getting to every January and thinking a new health book with more knowledge on sugar or more knowledge on alcohol is all that we need. No, you've got it, you've probably got enough external knowledge. I think what people need is more internal knowledge.
Dr Rupy: Let's riff on that idea of internal knowledge a bit more, I think, because it's a really critical point, I think, and it's foundational to this book. A lot of people might start relying, in the same way they rely on experts, which is the first part of the book, the first chapter, they start relying on external measures of internality. And what I mean by that is what I'm wearing on my finger right now. It's a, it's a tracker. It measures my sleep, gives me some indication of how my stress levels are or my heart rate is. Other people might start using a CGM, for example, as a way to try and kickstart a behaviour because they're getting more knowledge about what's going on in the inside. The point you're making, if I'm not mistaken, is not reliance on other factors that give us a measure of internality. It's actually being truly interoceptive. And I wonder if there are some practices that you can guide our listeners on that give us an idea of what's truly going on so we can actually be a lot more interoceptive rather than relying on external information.
Rangan: Yeah, and this is a great point, Rupy. So, I believe, whilst I acknowledge we're all unique and we've all got different lives, so what might work for one person may not work for somebody else. If I really had to say that there's one practice, a daily practice that I think everyone would benefit from, there's no question for me. In the current age in which we live, the most important practice, I think for most people each day is a daily practice of solitude. I I really believe that with all my heart. A daily practice of solitude doesn't need to sound scary. It can be whatever you want, right? It can be breathwork, it can be meditation, it can be journaling, it can be having your morning cup of coffee in silence, not looking at your email and Instagram at the same time. A revolutionary thought, I know, right? That qualifies as a daily practice of solitude because the problem, Rupy, is, right, and it and it sort of refers to something I said earlier in this conversation. We're living in a world now where we're being bombarded with information from the outside. If you wake up and the first thing you do is start consuming information, emails, social media, podcasts, even good quality information. And that's a key point. Even good quality information, let's say like your podcast or hopefully my podcast, right? You're still consuming from the outside and you've lost the opportunity to start listening to what's going on on the inside. You will never change your life for good in the long term unless you start listening to the signals that your body is sending you. Your body is very, very powerful. You know, interoception is a term that we're seeing more and more scientific literature around. Interoception is, you can almost think about it like our sixth sense, the ability to sense what's going on inside your body. You know, how's your breathing? What is your heart rate like? You know, all these things, right? And there's really good studies on interoception, right? There's a couple I write about in the book. There's one here, there was a study done at Sussex Medical School with autistic individuals who had symptoms of anxiety. They were able to significantly reduce their stress levels by training, by by getting training to be more aware of the signals from their own heartbeats, right? So I'll just, I'll just read what the summary said in that in that study. After just six sessions, 31% of them recovered completely from their anxiety compared to only 16% in the control group. Right? That's just by being more internally aware. There's also lots of research now on people who suffer with drug or alcohol abuse, right? Previous people who've had issues with addiction, right? And actually those who get this internal mindfulness training, they relapse less. They have less rates of depression, right? So it's it's very, very powerful. But I I I feel it kind of speaks to where we're going wrong in society on this kind of big picture level. We think all the answers to our life are on the outside. More knowledge, more reading, more blogs, more podcasts. Hey, listen, I'm part of that world, right? This is my sixth book, right? I release a weekly podcast. So I'm part of that. But I want people to know that you've got to listen to that information, put it through your own filter and then go, is this information right for me? Right, there's a case study in chapter one I'd love to share with your audience because I think, I think your audience obviously very interested in health, they're interested in nutrition, right? So there's a common, um, there's a common bit of advice these days online about having 30 different plant foods a week. Now, I'm not saying that there is a problem with that advice. I'm saying that that advice, I don't believe is for every single person. No piece of health advice I've come to the realisation works for every single person in every setting. And if we look at this through the lens of our reliances, I believe, Rupy, that many of us now are overly reliant on experts. Now, I say this as a so-called expert myself. There's a certain irony there, right? So I, like you, I'm a medical doctor. I've got an immunology degree. I've got a specialist in general practice qualifications. I'm now a professor at Chester Medical School, right? I've got all these qualifications, but I can still confidently say that I cannot know for sure to the person who's listening to this right now, what is the best approach for them in the context of their life. I can't. I can give them frameworks and principles to think about, but ultimately only they will know what is the best approach for them. So, for example, I don't know if you get this Rupy or not, right? I realise, let's think about this through the lens of nutrition because people are getting confused out there with all the advice, right? So people will say, you need to get your advice from experts. Okay. It sounds reasonable. But let's just play that out a little bit. Today, you could have an expert, and I think we both had Chris Palmer on our show.
Dr Rupy: I haven't had Chris Palmer yet.
Rangan: You haven't had Chris Palmer, right? So I've had Chris Palmer, right? I think Chris is a great psychiatrist, Harvard Medical School. And Chris came onto my show to talk about how he has found a ketogenic diet can, in some instances, be very helpful for people with severe mental health problems, like bipolar or severe anxiety, whatever it might be, okay? And he will present published research and case studies to support what he's saying. And then I may also have a couple of months later a different expert, another expert with the right credentials, another medical doctor, who might come on and say, actually, the evidence shows that it's a whole food plant-based diet that you need for your mental health, right? And they again will present published evidence and give you clinical case studies. So I would then get people in my DMs on Instagram saying, hey, Dr. Chatterjee, I'm listening, love your podcast. I kind of love what they both had to say, but I'm confused. I don't know which expert I should trust. And I believe in 2025, that is not the appropriate question to ask. I don't think it's the most useful question. Instead of asking which expert should I trust, I think the more helpful question is, why do I no longer trust myself? Because both of those experts can be right for some people, but they're not going to be right for everyone. And I think we've missed this. I know it's, I think it sounds quite obvious when I put it like that, but I think we're all walking around or many of us trying to find what, what is it? What is the truth? What is the perfect diet? No, it's not that, it's this. No, it's not that, it's this. It's like, well, wait a minute. Maybe there's no one perfect human diet that works for every single person. And, let's go back to our culture, Rupy, for a minute. Traditional Indian medicine, Ayurvedic medicine, or even traditional Chinese medicine that has been going for thousands of years, they've always recognised that actually different people have different constitutions and require subtly different approaches. I'm not against science. I think science is absolutely fantastic, but I think one of the problems or one of the traps we've fallen into is a belief that the scientific method is going to teach us what is the perfect diet for all of us. And like you, Rupy, I believe there are some common principles that we need to apply. You know, generally, as much as you can, minimally processed foods, you know, generally food that helps you balance your blood sugar, right? Trying not to consume excess sugar. Yes, all these things I think are great guidelines. But I think my clinical experience really informs my view on this, which is I've seen people thrive on low carb diets. I've seen people thrive on vegan diets. I've seen people thrive on paleo diets. I really have. And I've come to the realisation that there is no one perfect diet for everyone. And in that, in the chapter one of the book, I I share this story about someone, a patient I saw, right? She was very health conscious, and she consumed podcasts and blogs and she had heard a very prominent gut health expert say that you have to have, aim for 30 different plant foods every week. That's what will give you a really healthy gut microbiome. Now, again, I'm not, I'm not trying to criticise that advice. I'm I'm trying to make the point that not every piece of advice works for everyone. So she tried her best. She was stressing out. She was trying to introduce these 30 plant foods into her diet. She was struggling a little bit. She was getting bloated. She thought, okay, maybe I'm doing it too fast. Let me slow down and do it gradually. Whichever way she tried it, she didn't feel good. Her gut didn't feel good. She would get constipated, a bit bloated. And she felt like a failure. This is a really key point, right? This is why I'm so passionate about this idea. If we follow an expert's guidance and we don't succeed on it, we never think that they're the problem. We think that we're the problem. We think that we're a failure. Oh my God, I couldn't do it. Guilt comes in, shame comes in, which never leads to changes that last. Right? So for her, when she came in to see me, I said, listen, no one piece of health advice, no matter how good, is going to work for absolutely everyone. If you're open to it, would you like me to try and help you figure out what is the right approach for you at this point in your life? She goes, okay, sure. Over a period of about six weeks, we realised together that actually at that stage in her life, and again, that's a really key point, she did much better on a lower carb type diet where she had about five to 10 different plant foods a week. Right? And I did all her blood tests, right? Everything looked great. Her HBA1C, the average blood sugar marker looked really good. Fasting insulin looked good, her triglycerides looked good. Like, I'm like, you're feeling good. You're having a whole food, unprocessed diet, and your blood markers look good. I don't think you need to feel like a failure that you're not getting 30 different plant foods a week. I think things are going just fine. And I think it's a really, really important point there for all of us, myself included, and all your listeners, Rupy, which is listen to the information, right? Listen to experts like you and me. I'm not saying ignore us. I'm saying the balance has shifted too much where we actually, we ignore what we feel, and it's all about what the expert says. And so in some of those DMs, I said, hey guys, listen, what those two experts that you heard on my podcast, why don't you for four weeks try Chris Palmer's approach, right? And pay attention. Right? So we talk about interoception, it's a scary term, right? We can look at it another way. Pay attention. Pay attention to how you feel. What's your energy like? What's your sleep like? How are your bowels? What's your gut like? How's your bloating? How's your focus? Okay. Then for four weeks, try the other diet and pay attention to those same things. You will very quickly start to build up a picture of, actually, you know what? I think at this stage of my life, that one's suiting me a little bit better than that one. Does that all make sense, Rupy?
Dr Rupy: It makes a lot of sense. I think this is critical for people to understand because like you, I have dissenting views on the podcast as well, and that can be quite confusing because of what you've pointed out there so eloquently, this over-reliance on experts to guide my life, my eating habits, when in fact, instead, which is what the argument you're trying to make is, we should be trying to teach people to become their own doctors, their own experts, their own scientists, whereby they can digest the information from multiple opinions and yes, ensure that they are coming from trusted sources. You know, whether you've got a dietitian like Sue Ward, for example, who's been on the podcast talking about the benefits of ketogenic diets for chronic pain, even certain types of epilepsy, childhood epilepsy that's treatment refractory, and also a microbiome supporting diet that is full of like plant points and all the rest of it. But to that individual, you know, you're not an average, you're not a point on a on a on a chart. You you can be an outlier. You can respond differently because we have our own unique microbiome. We have our own unique set of genetics. We have our own life experiences as well that have brought us to a point where we may be reacting positively or negatively to a particular dietary input.
Rangan: And I would say, as I reflect on my training and frankly my entire life, I kind of feel that that individuality is something that Western medicine, allopathic medicine doesn't really emphasize enough for me, if I reflect back on my training. I think my training has been fantastic for many things, not for everything. Particularly for acute problems, I think medical training is very, very good, but I don't think it's as good as it could be for the chronic illnesses that are now bankrupting every healthcare system on the planet, basically, because the reality is most chronic disease or most of the things that doctors see today are in some way related to our collective modern lifestyles. I'm not blaming people when I say that. I understand that life is difficult and it's hard to make the choices that we want to make. But nonetheless, I don't think we necessarily always need a pharmaceutical solution for a problem that's driven by our lifestyle. It can be beneficial sometimes, for sure, but I think as a profession, we need to help people, you know, empower people more to make those small changes to their lifestyle in whatever way they can in the context of their lives. But even within that, there's no one perfect lifestyle. It's like, what's going to work for you? Right? And if I reflect on my career, Rupy, and think about the patients who truly transformed their lives for good, not just for January or for a few months, at some point along the way, they became their own experts. They were like, hey, doc, you know, I know you said that, but actually I found when I do it like this, or when I eat like this, I do much better. And so I think there's a really important point for us all to think about. You also asked me about these trackers, and we can apply that same principle here, right? Are you overly reliant on these trackers? Are those trackers helping you or harming you? We want to make everything black or white these days. Is it good? Right? Okay, let's take it away from trackers for a minute. Is fasting good or bad? Well, it kind of depends. Like, for who and in which context? Those I think are the two most important questions these days. For who and in which context, right? If you are a type two diabetic or you're carrying excess body fat, a form of fasting that suits you in the context of your life may be transformative for you. If you are a malnourished anorexic teenager who is struggling with or recovering from an eating disorder, fasting may not be the best practice for you, right? Fasting is neither good nor bad. It depends who we're using it for. This is what a clinician will know, like we we know that we need to apply the right tool with the right patient. But we can think about health wearables in this way, right? So let's just reverse back from these modern health wearables and go to another tracking device that we've had for many years in medicine, blood pressure monitors, right? So for many years, Rupy, patients would, you know, if they were diagnosed with high blood pressure, they'd often say to me, hey, do you think I should buy one of these home blood pressure monitors from the pharmacy? And I used to think, yeah, it's a good idea, why not? You know, it helps you keep on track. And what I soon realised is that this is not a scientific study, this is just my observation. Around 50% or so would find it really, really helpful. They'd measure a few times a week, maybe once a week or twice a week. If it started to creep up, it would empower them to be a bit more focused on their lifestyle. They go, God, you know, I've let my walking slip. I must keep going for my 30-minute lunchtime walk. Okay. They use it in a way that helped them. The other half, they'd use it four times a day. As soon as it was slightly high, they'd be on the phone to the practice. Can I talk to Dr. Chatterjee, please? I'm a bit worried. They'd get real health anxiety. So it's neither good nor bad. It depends on your relationship with the tool. It's never the tool, it's our relationship with the tool. So let's apply that then to these modern wearables. You've got a ring on, I've got a a wristband on, right? They're doing similar things. They're measuring our sleep, our stress, our heart rate variability. Now, I've had concerns for years or potential concerns, although I must say for me, I've been wearing this for about three months now and I love it because it's helping me get more in tune with my body. It's helping me with my interoception. So I believe we all have to empower ourselves and ask ourselves, are these wearables helping us? So if you're using a wearable, a bit of technology, for a particular purpose, for a discrete period of time, and you're using it to help you learn about yourself, I think they can be game-changing. But if you're using them in a way where actually you're becoming dependent on it, you cannot function without it. You'd forgot to charge the battery. And you have one night and you don't know how to exist because you don't have your sleep score in the morning. Actually, if it's helping you also, yeah, because you don't have your sleep score in the morning, and if it's giving you a negative view of yourself and the world around you, I would argue it's possibly not the right thing for you at that stage in your life. And there are some studies on this through, right? And I share them in this in this chapter. There was one study, right? They took these people into a lab. Some of them slept for five hours and some of them slept for eight hours, right? The group who slept for eight hours were told they'd only slept for five hours. And the group who slept for five hours were told they slept for eight hours. Okay. And the group who actually did sleep for eight hours but were only told they slept for five hours, we started to see a decline in their performance, in their fatigue and their cognition because our mind is actually really, really important, right? So if you're someone who sees that morning readiness score or sleep score and, you know, it really stresses you out, that might be a problem.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. And I think, you know, taking a sort of 10,000 foot view of this conversation and the noise that January or the start of any year, 2025 and beyond, will bring, people are looking for that direction, people are looking for, okay, just tell me what to do and I'll do it. But to your last point, ensuring that these are actionable and achievable for that individual is very important. You've got to be very, very intentional about what you choose to do. But also the principles and the psychology behind habit change is something that we also need to focus on as well, the philosophy behind it. And I think that's what's very, very different about this book to other books that you might find on on behaviour change more generally. It's still influenced by these principles, still influenced by the studies, but it's taking that upstream approach, right? And I wanted to to bring this conversation to, I mean, we could talk about so many others. I mean, you you talked about the reliance on being liked. That's something that, you know, me and you have talked about privately. The reliance on busyness, there's just so many reliances, and I think this concept of minimal reliance is brilliant, phenomenal. I wanted to to bring our conversation to a close by talking about Vid's dad, actually. It's something you mentioned in the book, and I thought that was amazing because with all the people that you've had on your podcast, incredible philosophers, scientists, people who are motivational speakers themselves, Vid's dad appears to sort of encapsulate a lot of these practices throughout his life, right? I wonder if you could give us a bit of background into.
Rangan: Yeah, so Vid's my wife, and, um, Vid's dad, so my father-in-law, is frankly one of the coolest people I've ever met. Like, genuinely. Um, and I've been married for just over 17 years now, so I've known Vid's dad for over 17 years. I don't think I've ever heard him complain once. I've spent a lot of time with him. We've been on holiday together loads. I've never heard him complain. He's warm, he's always smiling, nothing stresses him out at all. And then when you see what's happened in his life, you start to understand it more. So, when Vid was a young girl, she grew up in Kenya. Vid's dad's, you know, his family live in Kenya, in Nairobi. And there was a coup in Kenya in the 1980s, and the government were overthrown, and then there were gunmen and the army going around, um, raping women, going to doors, looting houses. And Vid still has a memory at a young age of being asked by her mum, because there were gunmen at the door, go into that cupboard with your brother, pull the, uh, pull the door shut and and stay quiet. Can you imagine the trauma from something like that at a young age? But in essence, Vid's dad used to be successful in Kenya, his family were, and they lost everything overnight. And he's had to rebuild his life, leave the country, come to the UK, have one business, have that then fail, restart again. He's had to do that. And I remember at an early age when I met Vid's dad, sorry, not at an early age, at an early on in my relationship with Vid, I remember Vid's dad once said to me, money comes, money goes, it doesn't make you happy. And I never really got it at the time. The more you understand his life, you get it. It's like he's had money and he's lost it all, right? So he's seen that actually, it doesn't really make you happy. You think it does. And again, I I say that with the acknowledgement that yes, we do need money to provide a sense of safety and if you don't have much money at all, yes, I accept that, you know, increasing money is going to help you with heating, food, looking after your family, that feeling of well-being. So I'm not trying to belittle that or minimize that. But I I find Vid's dad so inspirational because of his softness, man. He's always smiling. He never complains. Everything just seems to roll in and out. And I think it's because he's gone through extreme adversity, right? So he's seen it. And there's a chapter which I know you like called expect adversity, right? And that is, every chapter in the book is about a reliance that we have. And in that chapter, I say we have an over-reliance on everything in our lives going the way we want them to. Right? We somehow think that things are always going to get better. You know, we keep doing things and but it's not. It's a con. And then we get surprised when things don't go our way. And if anyone's wondering if they struggle with this reliance, I have a question for them. Ask yourself, how much do you complain? And if you're not sure, ask your partner, who may have a different perspective, right? Because if you complain, now I'm not saying there aren't decent reasons to complain, but if you regularly complain, you're essentially saying that you're constantly being surprised by the natural order of life. Right? And I really do believe that. Things are always going to go wrong. If you're always complaining, it means you're not expecting them to. You're surprised. Oh my God, there's traffic today. You know, if you're driving at times, there is going to be traffic sometimes, right? But when you get surprised by it and frustrated, you generate that emotional stress, which then leads to these problematic behaviours. Right? So in that chapter, I I share two stories to illustrate that point, and I talk about Vid's dad, right? One of the stories may seem quite extreme, but I think it it goes to illustrate the example. We're both medical doctors, and unfortunately, in the UK, the latest statistics are suggesting that over the course of a 40-year career, a UK medical doctor will be sued up to four times. Right? On average, I think it's four times, three to four times. Right? That's a lot. So if you see enough patients, it's going to happen. It's like if you drive enough miles on the road, no matter how good you are as a driver, it's likely that at some point you're going to be involved in something. It's just a numbers game, right? My friend, who was a GP, she ended up being the recipient of a negligence claim over a cancer misdiagnosis. You know, someone was coming in with symptoms, it turned out to be cancer, but no one picked up on it. Now, first of all, I want to acknowledge that's, uh, really hard for that patient and family, and I understand why they wanted answers, right? I think it's important to acknowledge that. It had nothing to do with my friend. She just got dragged into this wider investigation, but it broke her. For the two years that investigation was going on, she struggled. She'd drink every evening, she'd drink a lot at the weekends, she was depressed, she couldn't sleep. It really, really bothered her. And you might say it's understandable. Yes, it's understandable. Of course it is. No one becomes a doctor because they want to be subject to a negligence claim. You know, every doctor is trying to do the best they can to help the patients that they're seeing. But it is possible to change your mentality and go, wow, well, listen, if we look at this rationally, I'm going to get sued three to four times in my career. Ah, this is one of them. It was bound to happen. Here it is. Okay, no worries. That seems quite extreme, but you can apply that principle. I promise you. So I've been applying this in my life. I've been practicing to not be surprised by the natural order of life. And so a few years ago, Rupy, so I live very near to my mum. I've always had elderly parent caring responsibilities since I've been about 20. So I live very near to my mum who needs a lot of help. And mum for many years has had an emergency alarm around her neck in case she was to fall. She lives by herself. And a few years ago, I went to bed. I go to bed early, about 9:00, actually earlier these days, but half eight, but let's say 9:00 p.m., okay? And at about 10:00 or 10:30, my phone went off. And I was half asleep. I picked up the phone, and it was the call center said, oh, your mother's alarm has just been triggered. We've just spoken to her over the intercom. She can't get up. Are you around to go and help her? I said, yeah, yeah, tell her I'll be there in a second. So, you know, I was half asleep, dazed, went downstairs, got my car keys, in my pajamas, drove around to mum's, went in, she was on the floor, helped her, got her settled back in bed. When I was happy that she was going to be okay by herself, I said, okay, mum, listen, I'll check on you in the morning. I'm going to go home now. Walk out of mum's house, into the drive, get into my car, I reverse it straight out into the park car on the opposite side of the street. Okay. Now, the older version of Rangan who did not expect adversity would have done this. I would have berated myself first of all, and then I would have said something like, oh God, stupid me, on top of all this stuff now, I've got to do stress at work, stress with mum's health. Now I've got to deal with the insurance. This negative self-talk, and there's a consequence. The next day, I'm much more likely to have an extra pan of chocolate, an extra coffee, more sugar, right? Those behaviours are downstream consequences from how I interacted with that event. This is the big idea in this book, right? That the behaviours are there for a reason, and the reason you can't make these changes last is that you're not getting to the root causes of your behaviours. What I actually did, Rupy, because I've been practicing for years, and I was really proud of myself because I thought, oh, wow, I'm able to do this now in real time. I went into that car, and I remember sitting, I can still remember, I was in my pajamas going, oh, wow, well, no one got hurt. I've got insurance. And if I'm going to keep coming around half asleep to pick mum up off the floor, it was only a matter of time before I did this. And that one-time decision has multiple downstream consequences. I don't have all the negative self-talk, all the pity, all the, oh, my life is so hard, poor me. Again, I'm not judging. I used to do that, right? I'm just saying that wasn't useful. I suspect for most people, it's not useful. You're like, oh, it was going to happen. This is that event. It's happened. And so, a helpful exercise for people to help them with this is ask yourself how much you complain. And if you're not sure, or you want, um, someone to back up your answer, ask your other half, who may have a different perspective. And then every time you complain, turn that complaint either into an action, so you do something about it, or turn it into a moment of gratitude. It's such a simple exercise, Rupy. It is life-changing because when you turn it into a moment of gratitude, you stop thinking like a victim. And when you turn it into a moment of action, you stop acting like a victim. My challenge to anyone listening to the show is try that for seven days. Every time you complain, turn it into, turn it into an action or a moment of gratitude, and just start to pay attention how that feels because I bet for most people, they won't realize how much they're complaining, first of all, and then how quickly it is to turn that negative energy around. And circling back to my father-in-law, I think he gets this. You know, the reason he says money comes, money goes, it doesn't make you happy is because he's had that. He's had that. So nothing bothers him. He's had it all and he's lost it all. And he's still happy and content. And I would argue that even though I've just passed 500 episodes of my podcast and spoken to some of the most incredible minds around the world, I think my father-in-law is still probably one of the most inspirational people I've ever met. Genuinely. And I feel very lucky that he actually is my father-in-law.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, that's incredible. Honestly, I think the stories, the particularly the last one you told us about the car incident will resonate with so many people, and I think there's so many takeaways from not only the book but this conversation around solitude, the difference between fear and love, the stories we tell ourselves, and gratitude. I think it's going to be super, super impactful. So for anyone that's looking to make changes this year, just really leaning into the psychology of the why and what's leading to the habits that you're trying to change in itself and understanding that, I think it's going to be critical. So, man, I appreciate you. I appreciate you coming in here, sharing your wisdom and our friendship. I know I say this to you all the time, but I just want to say it publicly. I I just the the things that we chat about are so, so impactful to me. And it's really helped me and now that I'm a dad, I'm going to be leaning on you a lot more, I think, for some extra guidance.
Rangan: Can I just say on that, mate? The feelings are mutual. You know, I'm a massive fan of everything you do, Rupy, and as you as a person, I love not only what you do, I love how you do it. It really resonates with me. Um, you mentioned your morning routine before. And it's really interesting. I just want to share something from my life in case it's useful to you. And I think it, I think it almost relates to what we just finished off with, which is that expect adversity chapter, a reliance on everything going right, right, which it doesn't. I have realised since I became a dad, I realised because he didn't sleep for 15 months, as I've already said to you, right? So I realised very early on that I had to start going to bed earlier and getting up earlier because I realised I'm a much better human being when I have time to myself each morning. I'm a calmer dad, I'm a better husband, I'm a better doctor. So you get up early, you do your morning routine that you've you've got full control over, or you think you do. And then what happens is your kids get a bit older, right? So when, I'm going to say when my daughter was about four or five, what would often happen is I'd be in the middle of my morning routine in my living room and I'd be meditating, and I'd start to hear these little footsteps down the stairs, right? And then the door would open, and my daughter would come in. And if I'm completely honest, initially, I mean it's a while ago now, I think I would get frustrated. Not at her so much, but just, oh, I need my, I need my space, I need my morning routine. But then that's a reliance on things always going right. After a few weeks, I thought, Rangan, this is ridiculous. You love your kids to bits. Of course, they're going to come down and want to see you. You're their dad. They love you, right? So I reframed it and I thought, okay, from now on, I'm embracing it. So the next morning, when she came down, I was in the middle of my 10-minute meditation. I remember I opened my eyes. I said, hi, darling. She said, hi, daddy. I said, do you want to come and sit next to me? I'm just meditating at the moment. She said, is that okay? I said, yeah, yeah, sure. So she came and sat next to me. And so we're both sitting there against the sofa. I've got my eyes shut. She's then trying to meditate with me. She's got her hand on my thigh. And, you know, we finish off together. I said, how was that? She goes, yeah, yeah, I feel good. And, you know, I lent into that, right? And as they kids got older and they'd be making noise in the kitchen whilst I'm trying to meditate in the living room, instead of being frustrated, I'm like, this is awesome. What good training. If I can meditate while this is going on, I can meditate anywhere. Right? So it's all about the story you tell yourself. You either tell yourself a disempowering story, or I would say to you as someone with almost 15 years experience, you are going to find times in your life where you can't do these routines that you could do as a single unmarried guy or as a married husband without children. And if you can lean into that and embrace it, actually, those routines can be really, really fun and you stop a lot of that internal stress. So I'm just sharing that in case it's helpful for you.
Dr Rupy: That's very helpful, man. I'm going to use that. I'm going to use that. As he gets older, he starts to interrupt your morning routine, you'll think about this moment.
Rangan: I will think about this moment for sure, man.
