Rangan Chatterjee is a physician, author, and podcaster. Breaking old habits can be just as challenging as building new ones. As we step into a new year, what does the latest science say are the best strategies for forming positive habits and letting go of the old ones? Expect to learn what the problem with reliance is and why having minimal reliance is important, why hero worship is problematic, why there are problems with perfectionism, how to let go of the past, why so many people feel the need to be liked, why focusing too much on behaviours is problematic, why people struggle to make changes that last, and much more... Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get a Free Sample Pack of all LMNT Flavours with any purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom Get a 20% discount on the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom Get the best bloodwork analysis in America and bypass Function’s 400,000-person waitlist at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period from Shopify at https://shopify.com/modernwisdom Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the problem with reliance?
What's the problem with reliances? The problem with reliances is that we are overly reliant on too many things in the outside world which we cannot control. And those reliances, Chris, are tying us down. So as a medical doctor, one of my main interests is how do you help people make changes that actually last? Not changes for...
Chapter 2: How do we make long-term behavioral changes?
two or three weeks in January or maybe January, February, March, but actually long-term transformational changes. And I realized that one of the reasons why people cannot or they struggle to make those long-term changes is because they're too reliant on too many things. I'll give you an example, right? So many people feel that they can only feel good and live the life that they want if
when everything around them goes right, okay, there's no traffic, the emails are okay, the coffee is given to you by your barista just the way you like it, okay, your boss treats you nicely, there's no traffic on the way home from work. If those conditions are met, we can feel calm and satisfied and we can get on with our life and make the choices that we want to make. But...
If those conditions are not met, then actually we start to struggle. We don't feel good in who we are. And what I've realised, Chris, over 23 years now seeing patients, is that usually the behaviours that we are trying to avoid or cut down on are there for a very good reason. And they're usually there to help us neutralize the internal discomfort that we feel.
So the reason I think that most people cannot or struggle to make changes that last is It's because they're not understanding the role that those behaviours play in their life. They're too focused on the behaviour, but I think we need to be focused on the energy behind the behaviour.
How do you dig behind a behaviour, given that it's quite hard to... We're not crystal balls to ourselves. We don't know why we do the things we do all the time.
Yeah, it's not as hard as actually... It's not as hard as we might think, right? Because let's take something super common and something that people are trying to reset their relationship with all the time. Let's say alcohol, for example, right? So...
What I see a lot of in medicine is us trying to give public health advice to people saying, look, too much alcohol, frankly, a little bit of alcohol is probably not helping you that much. And the way we'll try and facilitate change is by giving people more knowledge and more information, right? You know, too much alcohol will damage your liver. It's not good for your weight.
It's not good for your sleep architecture, whatever it might be. And that can be helpful up to a point. But I submit that most people who are trying to cut back on alcohol or cut it out completely, and you can substitute alcohol for sugar or online pornography or gambling or whatever you want, basically, it's a behaviour.
What a lot of people who are trying to do that, they already know the damage that that is causing for them. Not everyone, but a lot of them do. What they're not understanding is why do they keep going to that behaviour? So instead of every January, for example, buying the new book on the alcohol detox or the sugar detox...
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Chapter 3: Why is perfectionism a barrier to change?
And thirdly, if I release an episode of my podcast each week, which I've been doing for seven years now, I will be doing something each week to improve the lives of others. It's such a simple exercise, Chris.
But I tell you, in a world where we have infinite things competing for our attention, and we often think that we'll only do the important things when everything in our life is done, and everything in our life is never done these days, it forces me And a really beautiful way to focus on these are my top priorities.
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Now, right now, you can get a free sample pack of all eight flavors with your first box by going to the link in the description below or heading to drinklmnt.com slash modern wisdom. That's drinklmnt.com slash modern wisdom. Just going back to the perfectionism thing, regret. Obviously, people are going to do things. We get toward the end of our lives. We grow up. We accumulate regret.
Do you think regrets are a form of perfectionism in that way? Yeah. If only I could have threaded the needle perfectly. If only I could have danced through this minefield without triggering one of them.
Yeah, this is one of my favorite sections in the book. This is one of the latest additions before I submitted it, is this idea that regret is a form of perfectionism, right? And I wanted to talk about this with you today because I've just seen your blog from Australia on YouTube, right?
And you're on stage, and I don't know if this is still your view or not, but my recollection of what I saw was that you said on stage, or certainly the bit in the vlog, was about this idea that we choose our regrets. So can I present my perspective, which I see a little bit differently than that. I think it is possible to live a life of no regrets. I really do.
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Chapter 4: How do we dig behind our behaviors?
If you get up and the first thing you do is start consuming from the outside, whether it's news, whether it's social media, even if it's good quality information, you've lost an opportunity to listen to yourself. Our body is always sending us signals. And in this world of content and information, I think many of us are never getting that time to listen to ourselves.
So the only way you get to know if you're telling yourself a nice story and kidding yourself is by sitting with yourself every day, only for five or 10 minutes if that's all you've got. But that could be It could be meditation. It could be breath work. It could be some yoga moves. It could literally be having a cup of coffee and not also scrolling Instagram and email at the same time.
It could be going to the toilet without taking your smartphone with you. Something that many people find revolutionary. Seriously, but it is. The truth is, Chris, it really is for people because these little micro moments where you allowed your own thoughts to come up are being eroded out of life. So I'm not putting all the blame on smartphones, right? Ultimately, it's just a tool.
It's our relationship with the tool that determines the impact they have on us. But if you practice sitting with yourself, it doesn't have to be in the morning. I happen to think the morning is the best time for most people. You will start to know when your heart rate's going up. You will start to know when you're telling yourself fibs.
I mean, one thing I do every morning, Chris, well, there's a couple of things I do. One of the things I do is a breath hold work meditation practice that I learned from, do you know the MoveNAT founder, Ewan LaCour?
No.
Natural movement guy. He's been promoting natural movement for years. About two years ago, I did his new breathwork course online. It was twice a week for four weeks. It was probably one of the most life-changing practices I've done for me personally. I remember because I was on a book tour as it happened at the time. I'd just arrived in Stockholm. I got to my hotel room.
I was running a bit late for the course. I got there and it was online. And the first thing he asked us, and there was maybe about 12 of us on this Zoom together, he said, all right, I want to take a full breath in as much as you can and then time how long you can hold it for. And I did about 60 seconds, something like that. Okay, that was your benchmark.
Just to be really clear, this is nothing like Wim Hof and the hyperventilation before. And there's nothing like that. It's purely take a breath and hold. There's nothing to prepare your body for. Within four weeks, Chris, I went from one minute to four minutes and 20 seconds.
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Chapter 5: What role do experts play in our health decisions?
You can have a much more productive relationship with that situation if you don't walk around getting triggered by everything. Does that make sense, Chris? Because that's the point I'm trying to make. There's a subtle difference there. I'm not saying we're saying that that behavior is okay.
I'm saying if you want to change that behavior, you're going to be much better at changing that behavior if you can stay internally calm. And all you have to do is practice, I believe that.
Yeah, I like that. It's interesting, the line between taking offense and complaining in life, the great British pastime that it is. And I love an insight from you, which is complaining indicates that you're surprised at sort of the natural order of life. I've got this Thomas Sowell quote, like fucking tattooed on the inside of my eyelids at the moment, there are no solutions, only trade-offs.
And I Yeah, the fact that a complaint, for the most part, is you railing against the fact that you haven't been able to fully optimize life and that you didn't expect it to be smooth sailing. There are inevitably going to be obstacles and things for you to navigate around and issues. That is the natural order of your day-to-day experience. Your complaint is you just saying, look, life again.
Yeah, I'm really glad you picked that out of the book because it's one of my favorite. I'm not saying they're all my favorite. This is such a personal book. It's literally my template of how I got to this place and why I feel so passionate about these ideas. And one of the chapters is literally about this. It's called Expect Adversity. And the reliance is a reliance on things never going wrong.
And I think many of us subconsciously hold that. We're surprised when one day there's traffic. Well, if you drive enough, there's going to be traffic, right? We're surprised if you're a parent, and I know you're not yet, but many parents or some parents will sometimes on the way to picking up their kids will nip into the supermarket to get food for dinner on the way. Well, you know what?
Sometimes there is going to be an elderly lady having a natter with the checkout assistant. That is going to happen. But if you in that moment get really frustrated and annoyed, you are rebelling against the natural order of life. Now, there are things you can do about this. And I want to share an exercise that I do that's been really helpful. But another way to look at this is,
I don't know if this is an extreme example. It's an example I use in the book, but I think it's quite powerful. Current statistics say that a UK doctor will be sued on average four times over the course of a 40-year career, right? It doesn't matter how good you are. If you see enough patients, you are going to get sued. If you drive enough times, you're going to be involved in a crash, right?
It's going to happen. It's not a matter of if, it's when. So a really close friend of mine a few years ago, this is quite an extreme situation, but I think it illustrates the point. There was a missed case of a cancer diagnosis that had nothing to do with my friends, but she got dragged into this complaint. And of course, the family have every right to make a complaint, right?
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