Medical doctors are waking up to the importance of happiness, partly prompted by the work of people like Rangan Chatterjee. Dr Chatterjee is Professor of Health Education and Communication, the host of the hit podcast 'Feel Better, Live More' and author of five best-selling books including Happy Mind, Happy Life: 10 Simple Ways to Feel Great Every Day.
Rangan sat down with Dr Laurie Santos at the 2024 World Happiness Summit to discuss his life and work - and explain why physicians like him are joining the fight to make happiness a health priority.
Pushkin. The world is certainly facing a ton of happiness challenges, but whenever I feel downhearted at the sheer scale of the problems we need to tackle, I remember all the people working hard to put things right. These days, there are so many people in government, in medicine, in academia and in the media trying to draw attention to the importance of well being that they can easily fill a whole conference center. The World Happiness Summit WAHA SUE for short, has been bringing experts together since twenty sixteen to meet, swap ideas and give talks to the public. This year's summit was in London and I went along so I could record a live episode of this show with a total rock star of the British happiness community. Welcome to the WAHASU Live version of The.
Happiness Lab.
I am. I'm super excited to introduce my guest, Doctor Rungan Chatterjee. Doctor Chatterjee is professor of health education and communication, the host of the Feel Better, Live More podcast, which is the most listened to health podcast in Europe. He's also the author of five best selling books, including his most recent, Happy Mind, Happy Life Tends Simple Ways to Feel Great every day, and today we're going to be talking about why medical doctors need to pay even more attention to happiness.
Will how's the audience.
Are you all interested in medical doctors paying more attention to happiness? Yes, so, Rangan, You've long been an advocate of the importance of all kinds of healthy practices, but lately, in your most recent book, you've been making a claim that medical professionals also have to pay attention to something else, something that historically doctors haven't paid much attention to, which is people's happiness. Why is a happy life important for a healthy life?
So I've been practicing that for over two decades. Okay, So during that time, I've seen tens of thousands of patients, and it's very clear to me, and it's very clear in the research that about eighty to ninety percent for what a doctor like me it's going to see in any given day is in some way related to our collective modern lifestyles. Now, let me be really clear with that. I am not putting blame on anybody. Okay, modern life is tough, it's very stressful, and so if you start off with the belief and the view that eighty to ninety percent of our medical problems are in some way related to the way we're living our lives. The next logical step is to go, okay, well, we need to educate our patients on what those things are that they can then change food movements, sleep, stress reduction, the things that I call the four pillars of health. And for many years I've been talking about that in public and I think that's incredibly useful. But for thelast few years I've been wondering, is that really the root cause or is it something even higher than that? And that's what led me to happiness, because I realized that actually, for many people, their lifestyle behaviors they weren't necessarily the root cause. They were a cause of sorts, but they were a downstream consequence of their moods, of the way they approached the world, of the state of their lives, of their happiness.
Right.
So, I think most people will in choously understand that happier people will naturally.
Make better lifestyle choices.
Okay, you're not going to dive headfirst into a tub of ice cream in the evening. Generally speaking, if you feel pretty content with life, usually for most people, that's a way of managing stress or internal discomfort or loneliness. So I found that we can tell patients about these lifestyle choices, but if those lifestyle choices are their way of coping with the stress in their life, they're never going to change the behavior unless I helped them change their stress, for example. So that's one way of answering your question. But actually, if you go into the research, there seems to be this link between happiness and health that goes beyond these lifestyle behaviors. And actually, Laurie, when you came onto my podcast maybe two or three years ago, you shared with me a really powerful study that made a real impact on me, which was that study where I think it was a psychologist who did it, when they took people into a laboratory and they injected rhinovirus up their nostrils. Pretty pleasant study, right. Rhinovirus is the bug that causes the common colds. Now, what was interesting about this study is that they could see quite clearly an association between your mood and whether you got sick from the virus. So basically, as Laurie told me on my show, the group who were in the not so positive mood agree, right, got sick three times as much, right, So that's pretty remarkable. So why does a doctor then need to know that? Well, if we're not thinking about mood and well being and happiness, Well, that study is showing a pretty compelling association between your immune system function and your happiness. So more and more I've been led down to the belief that actually we need as doctors to be talking about happiness a because it directly affects your lifestyle choices, but beyond that, independently of that, and there's more research to support that happiness is associated with better health.
And so as we think about happiness being associated with better health, I think is the nerds that we are. We also have to think about our definition of happiness, and there are lots of different definitions of happiness out there in the literature. You use a sort of three prong of coach in your book, which I really quite like. So talk to me about this sort of three parts of happiness as you think of it.
Yeah, So it took me over six months to try and figure out what I call the code to happiness. Now, of course many people have got their models for approaching happiness. For me, as a doctor, I'm always thinking about what's practical. We can talk about big ideas, but how does that busy person with a busy life actually put this into practice. So I was trying to develop a model that really underpins its idea that happiness is a skill. Happiness is a skill that you can get better at if you know how to cultivate it. And so the best way I could explain it to people was with the core happiness stool. So it's basically a three legged stool, and each of the legs is an ingredient of happiness. So each one in isolation is going to help, but each one in isolation is not enough in and off itself. So the three legged stool of happiness, the way I see it, is composed of alignment, contentment, and control. So alignment is basically about when the person you are inside and the person who you are being out there in the world are one and the same.
Okay, So when you're.
Inner values and your external action start to line up more and more, that's alignment. The next leg is contentment. So what are those things in life that give you a sense of peace, a sense of calm, and in a sense of contentment. That's the leg of contentments. And the final leg, which I think is even more important today if we think about the state of the world and what we might be exposed to if we go online or look at the news, for example. The third leg of the stool is control. Now I thought long and hard about this word, because it's not about controlling the world. It's about giving yourself a sense of control. And it's actually such different. What are the things you can do in life that give you that sense of control. We know from the research that people who have a strong sense of control over their lives, the happier, the healthier, They do better at work, they earn more money, they have better social relationships. So for me, the whole book is basically about practical things that work on one, two, or three of those legs off the stool. So you're not directly working on happiness. You're doing something, hopefully each day that works on alignment, contentment, and control. And the side effects of that is you're going to feel happier more often, and I think most people want to feel happier more often.
One of the things I love about your book is that you don't just start with this definition of happiness. You really try to come up with these ten practical domains in which people can apply different strategies to start getting happier. And one of the ones that you start with is trying to get past what you call the want brain. What is the want brain?
And how do we get run?
And I can just say, the reason why everything I do is so practical focused is if you think about my life, you know, for many years it's been seeing patients. So I can't just say to them, hey, look there's a strong link between happiness and health. Okay, that was going to help in your immune sysfunction. I see you in a month's time. No, I mean I have to be able to tell them and explain something. But then I have to for me. I feel I have to give them something that they can go and develop and cultivate and start to feel it for themselves. So that's why I'm always so practically focused. But the one brain okay, so the one brain is that part of your brain that evolved a long time again, many thousands of years ago, that makes you think you have to compete, there is limited resources. I have to get what's mine. It convinces you that a promotion, a better salary, a nicer phone, a piece of chocolate, although you may disagree with that, but it convinces you that that's going to make you happier. And actually, for most of those things, it's actually a myth. And we know that because there's a lot of research showing us that there's some research where they phone people up at various parts of the day after they've engaged in certain activities, and we find that actually when people have just brought something online, or they've had a bit of chocolates, or you know, they're getting seduced by the modern myth of success, which often means in the workplace that people feel less motivated, they feel less confident, and they feel depressed.
But the one brain.
Is very, very powerful, and I think we're living in a time where society and culture very much prioritizes the one brain. So many of us get sucked into this trap that more work, more promotion, more Instagram followers, more whatever is going to make us happy. And by and large, in most cases, if you identify that with your happiness, it's going to be a disappointment. And I can tell you I started the book with very I think it's a very powerful story of my dad. So my dad's came to the UK in nineteen sixty two from India for a better life, and Dad faced all kinds of discrimination and all kinds of things that many immigrant families at that time will have experienced. But basically, for thirty years, my dad worked four nights a week, right, so he worked in the day as a consultant medical doctor at manster Warm Infirmary. But Dad would come home every night, he would shave, he'd have his dinner and then a car would pick him up at seven pm and Dad would be out doing gp house course all night. He'd come back at seven am shave, Mum had give him breakfast and he'd drive for thirty minutes back into Manchester and work all day. So for thirty years, my dad only slept for three nights a week, right. And at fifty seven, my dad gets loopus, he gets chronic kidney failure and he's on a dalist machine for fifteen years. And my dad died almost eleven years ago now. And I'm convinced that this wants brain, that this belief that success and more money is going to make you happier and the people around you happier. I'm convinced that's why my dad got sick and that's why he's no longer here.
I mean, it's such a powerful story. Of course, the problem is it's so hard to shut off the want brain from the basic physical wants of like ooh chocolate to ooh promotion, ooh more money. What are some strategies we can use to tackle the want brain. You have an exercise that I think we might even be able to try out quickly here with this audience.
Right, yeah, I mean one of my favorite exercises is in chapter one of the book. It's called your Own Happy Ending, and it's so simple. But I think if you take nothing else from our conversation, but just do this exercise and maybe share it with someone in your family or someone who's sitting next to you later on, I honestly believe it will change the trajectory of the next few weeks and months of your life. And it's so so simple, right, So the first stage is and yes, as Laurie says, try and imagine it and do it now. If you can imagine you're on your deathbeds right now, look back on your life and ask yourself, what are three things you will want to have done or spent time on what does he think about that?
Okay?
And then the second part of the exercise is you bring it into the present day and go, Okay, what's three happiness habits do I need to do each week that will give me the happy ending I've just defined I want. It is deceptively simple, right, So for me, at the end of my life, I will want to have spent quality time with my family and friends. Like everyone else, I will want to have done something that impacts the people around me in a positive way. And I will want to have spent time or have had time to pursue things that I'm passionate about. So for me, my three weekly happiness habits are and these are written up on my fridge at home, so I see them every day, just on a piece of paper, nothing fancy, very low tech, scrap piece of paper and a pencil.
Right, I specify.
I want five meals a week with my wife and my two kids where I'm completely undistracted.
Okay, may not work for you. That works for me.
I need to record one episode in my podcast each week, which I've been doing for six and a half years, because I know that will have an impact on the world around me. And if I've had time each week to either go for long walk in nature, play my guitar, write some songs, play snooker with my son, whatever it might be, I know I've had time to pursue my passions. Now, why that's such a powerful exercise. It doesn't necessarily remove the want brain, Right, It doesn't mean I don't also get seduced into these belief systems that the culture will kind of feed in.
But it means that.
I'm intentionally focusing on the things that are important every single week. Now, those things don't take long. Right, It doesn't mean that my email inbox won't overflow, and I might get stressed about that. But the problem today, in my view, is that we fit in the important things when everything else is done. But the problem is today everything else is never done. There's always something else. There's always another email to answer, another person to get back to, another WhatsApp message group to reply to. Right, And so if you don't intentionally put in your diary the things that are important for your happiness, I think your happiness is going to wither away. And it's a simple exercise, but it's very very effective. I do it myself and I've done it for years with my patients and they really really like it.
I think it's so powerful too, because what this exercise causes you to realize is that, like, you're never going to have time to get everything done, Like you're going to have a bunch of balls in the air, and a lot of those balls are going to fall. But the key is to make sure the right balls fall. And our instinct is never that we let the email ball fall, because it's like you know, pinging in our phones in our pockets. But this sort of forces us to say, there's a reason I'm not entering my email, and it's because I'm having dinner with my kids.
Yeah, and I often i'm the worst person, or one of the worst people in the world at getting back to emails. But you know what, I've made peace with that. I'm okay with that because me not getting back to emails generally means I'm spending time with my children and my wife, and so I've got very clear that that's important.
Now here's the thing about that deathbed exercise.
Right, we all think we're different, and we all have individual likes and needs and wants, and yes, of course there's variability but on one level, we're not that different. You know, palliative care nurses who have sat with dying people, like Bronnie Ware, who wrote the book The Five Regrets of the Dying, who I had a beautiful conversation with last year when she was in London.
On my podcast.
She explains that after eight years of sitting with dying people, what are the things that they say? And they all say the same things. I wish I hadn't worked so hard. I wish I'd spent more time with my friends and family. I wish I'd lived my life and not the life that other people expected of me. So for me, these things aren't just cute Instagram memes which go viral, right, They don't have to be. We can convert it into action, We can use it as a way of thinking. I don't want to wait until my death bed to learn what's important, right, And it's the thing I didn't mention my dad. One thing I will say, though, just to which I think is really important. And I've reflected on this since I wrote the book and shared the story of my dad's One thing I can't say is that he made the wrong choices. And I'll tell you why I can't say that. If my dad was here today, one of the questions I'd love to ask him is Dad, was it worth it? Because you know what, for him, coming from India where he didn't feel there was much opportunity, he may go to me, and I suspect he would actually. And this is where my view has evolved since I wrote A Happy Mind, Happy Life. I think my dad was a lie. Today he may say, hey, son, listen, it was totally worth it. I'd do it all again because look how I've set you up with a great education.
Look what impact you're having on the world. Look what your brother's doing.
And I'm now sort of seeing the other side and going actually, for him, maybe it was worth it.
But the key and the beauty of this exercises you can figure out what's worth it for you, which is so powerful. So in our second tip from your book, we're going to explore a practice that you find most important. But unfortunately we have run out of time, and that means that all of you can only figure out Ronan's second most important thing. If you listen to the Happiness Pod, can we get a big round of a plaza? That's right, Runkan and I only had about twenty minutes on stage and then we had to make way for some other great speakers.
But kindly the.
World Happiness Summit folks set us up in an empty auditorium next door so we could continue our conversation, which is coming up right after this quick break. So we're now done our conversation at Wahasu in front of that big, amazing audience, and now we are in a different auditorium That might sound a little bit echoey because there's nobody in here. We're sitting out here looking at like one hundred emptyc which is a little strange.
But yeah, and we were just getting going were we I know, like there was a real energy in there in the room, and now we've got to recreate that for the second time.
But which is a good way to jump to your second tip that we were just about to talk about before, which is this idea that we need to treat ourselves with kindness and treat ourself with respect even when the situation like this one might be a little bit tricky. And one of the reasons I loved your book so much is that you're really candid about the fact that this is something that you have struggled with yourself a little bit.
Yeah, it's interesting, Laurie that you know I mentioned the three legs of the stool, and I mentioned alignments and the importance of living in a way that is aligned with who we really are. And for this book, actually it's the most vulnerable I've ever been, to the point where my wife, who never reads any of my books until the final stage, is when she read it she actually said, Hey, wrong, going to be sure you want to put all of this in your book. And I think I'd be on this happiness journey myself, and I feel that it is important as long as I'm comfortable with it which I am to share the things or some of the things that maybe I previously wouldn't have shared, because it's kind of who I am. It's led to who I am today. And I think that negative inner voice is one of those things. I think I've had a pretty vicious inner voice for much of my life. I never felt good enough growing up. You know, there's two signs to every story. There's definitely not about blame. But this is actually not that uncommon in immigrant families, certainly here in the UK.
I would say I can only speak for that.
But if I came home from school when I was six or seven with nineteen out of twenty, it was never well done. It was always what did you get wrong? Why didn't you get twenty? If I ever came back and I was second in the class, Mum and Dad would always ask, well, who came top? How many points lower were you? How can you come top next time? And I didn't realize until about ten years ago what an impact that has had on me on my life, because I never felt full the love for.
Who I was. Now.
I'm not blaming my parents. They were doing the best that they could and for them, as immigrants to the UK, their belief system is we face a lot of struggle and discrimination. If my child can be a straight A student and get a really good job like a doctor or a lawyer, they're not going to have any problems. The problem is that little Wrongan developed the belief at a young age that I'm not good enough unless i'm number one. And for all my success, and we spoke about the want brain earlier, I've had more success than I could have dreamt off as a child, But that success is not why I'm sitting with you here today, Laurie, as happy and contented as I've ever been. In fact, that success has taught me that success doesn't make you happy. For me, at least, it didn't make me happy. What makes me happy is when I live in harmony with who I am, want to have a meaningful relationship with my wife, When I get time each week to spend quality time with my children. You know, I live five minutes away from my mother. I help to look after and care for her. These are things that actually make me happy. So how does that fit in with being kind to yourself? Well, when you don't feel like you're good enough, you will develop certain traits to compensate. So I have been very competitive for much of my life. A lot of my best friends will tell you wrong, as one of the most competitive people I know. But you know what, I'm not anymore because that competitiveness was an adaptation. If you only feel that, you get love when you're top of the tree, while developing the behavior trait of competitiveness is a genius adaptation because it drives you to do more and to achieve more. But as I've made peace with my upbringing, I've done a lot of you know, for once of a better term in a work, and I I feel very at peace with who I am. I like the person who I am today, so I no longer need the trait of competitiveness. So I believe that you can actually change a huge part of who you are, not everything, if you go in and do the work, maybe with a healthcare professional or a therapist. And today my inner voice is really really kind, but it wasn't. And it's really important for happiness, Laurie, because not just happening, but health too, right, Yeah, it's really important for happiness and health.
Right.
So, Kristin Neff has done a lot of research Professor Kristen nev on self compassion, and her research has shown a really strong link between self compassion and physical health. There's other research that shows that people who are more compassionate to themselves not only they kind it to others, but their immune system works better, they age more slowly, and they're better able to stick to healthy lifestyle habits.
Right.
So self compassion is massive, and we don't realize that if we call ourselves a loser. And I used to like if I wasn't doing well, i'd I mean, I share this in the book it's in fact, this is one of the stories. My wife said, are you sure you want to share this? I can remember at university in Edinburgh and medical school if on a Sunday afternoon we were at a local pool hall, just me and my buddy's, you know, playing pool. If I was losing. Now, I consider myself a decent player. If I was ever losing to one of my friends, sometimes i'd go into the restroom. I'd look at myself in the mirror, give myself a lot of slap and say, come on, you'd lose it, get yourself sorted right.
That's what I would do.
And you're not like a competitive billiards player. This is like you and your maids.
I'm not a professional, right, And it would often motivate me to go back and sort my game out, and usually I would then go on to win. But when writing this book, what I realized, Laurie is that I didn't enjoy winning. The pain of losing is what I was trying to avoid, so I didn't feel it relates.
To when i'd won. I was relieved that I hadn't lost. And that's pretty dark.
Yeah, I mean, but this is a general feature of the want brain, right, Like, when the want brain gets what it wants, it's usually not very happy or as happy as you thought. It's usually not satisfied. You just like want something else immediately. And the pressure that that can put on our mindset and our self talk is just incredible. And so so I'm curious kind of how you got out of this sort of really self critical voice. But I also want you to talk about the specific practice you recommend in the book, because as usual you have this like incredibly straightforward, practical kind of strategy that folks can engage in. And so talk maybe about kind of how you got out of things, but then also what you recommend.
For your educatients.
And I think it's important just to say that when you call yourself a loser in your head, that is not neutral. It's not just something you're saying to yourself. When I suppose to Professor Kristen Neff on my podcast, she said to me that, and she showed me research that when you talk negatively to yourself, you elevate levels of the stress hormone cortisol. So you are literally stressing yourself out with that negative self talk. And I think a lot of people don't realize that they think, Oh, I'm just saying it to myself. It doesn't matter. No, it absolutely matters, because that's the start of all kinds of negative emotions like guilt and shame, and all kinds of things which spiral and lead us to make poor choices.
In our life and negative health consequences.
I mean.
One of my favorite bits of Nef's research is that she looks at people who are more self compassionate versus less and their level of healthy eating, and she finds that people who are more self compassionate can make healthier choices in terms of what they're eating. And the cortisol story makes total sense there. Right, if you're flooding your brain with cortisol, you're like, I need snack food, I need like comfort food.
I feel that.
And what I found is that lifestyle change for me these days is a lot easier than it used to be because I'm not trying to overcome something because I'm kind to myself these days and compassionate to myself. Well, a compassionate person someone who truly likes themselves and likes to be compassionate to themselves, then probably not going to binge eat sugar as much right, And I'm not saying that to be critical to anyone, but we have to understand that self compassion is a critical ingredient for health and happiness. So how have I done it? Well, there's been a combination of different ways. Yes, I have done a bit of therapy, something called IFS Internal Family Systems, which for me was incredibly helpful. But I know that therapy is not either available or accessible to everybody for all kinds of issues. Cost you know what you have available to you in your area, and I don't think you necessarily need it. You can do a lot even without it. And so just being aware and catching yourself when you have a negative voice, I think is really useful.
For me.
Having children has been really, really helpful because what a lot of parents I think need to hear is that if you have a negative voice that you say out loud in front of your children, oh stupid me, Oh I can't do anything right? Well, what voice do you think they're going to develop? So for me, having children was a really it was a huge motivating factor to catch myself and not do it in front of the children.
Doesn't mean it's good to do it away.
From them, but Initially I didn't want to do it in front of them because I didn't want them to pick it up. For much of my life until the last five or six years, I don't think I was that happy.
I think I.
Thought more, I need to compete, I need to do better. That's going to make me happy. But I got all that and it didn't. That's when I stopped looking outside and I started to turn the ship around to look internally and go, ah, you need to do some work here, that's what's going to make you happy. So one of the practices in the book that I really like, that it's really practical for people, is to write themselves a love letter.
Now to a British.
Audience, I'm not sure there's anything more uncomfortable than say something like that. Maybe it goes down easier in America.
I don't know.
I think not unfortunately.
Yeah, But the point of it is, can you fact, let's make it easy. Can you write down on a piece of paper or in your journal five things you like about yourself?
And one of the things I love about the suggestion in your book is you say, if you can't think of those five things, pretend you're your best friend. Pretend you're your dog. Pretend you're someone who really cares about you. What would they say about you?
Yeah, pretend you're that teacher who you had in high school that was awesome for you. What would they say about you? Start there, because you're opening the door to self compassion.
It can be that easy. Now.
If you can't do five, but you can only think of one, start with one, right, and maybe over the next few days, see if you can build up to two or three, and look, what does the research say. There are some really good research showing that for seven days in a row, if you write yourself a compassionate letter, a love letter, let's say, right, or just a letter wait you say nice things about yourself. Three months later, those researchers can still measure improvements in your happiness and your subjective well being.
I mean this stuff.
What I love about it is it simple, it doesn't cost any money, and it can have a real impact. Now, Laurie, if anyone who's listening to this right now is pushing back a little bit and going, I'm not writing.
Myself a love lad set, I would say, Okay, I hear you.
But if you're pushing back, it's probably a very good sign that self compassion is something you need to work on. And I would just say, like with anything, start small, and.
This is you know, something that you obviously, as a medical doctor know really well. We assume like, oh, we're fixing our traits. If I'm self critical, I'll just be self critical forever. But like our brains have neuroplasticity, right, you know what fires together, wires together. Right. The more you do these activities, the more likely it is that it's going to become a habit that you can pick up. So this, this writing, this love letter might seem kind of cheesy in your journal some random Thursday night, you do that every night, but then naturally when you're playing pool, it will just be the talk that you bring up.
It just becomes more of a happy you bring up some really interesting First of all, what I've realized in life is that we get good at what we practice. If you practice stress every day, you get pretty good at feeling stressed. If you practice negative self talk every day, you get really good at talking.
Down to yourself.
If you practice self compassion every day, or gratitude every day, you get really good.
At those things.
And it's interesting just to tie up the loop with having children. I remember a few years ago I was actually playing pool or snooker with my son, who at the time was about eight or nine, and I remember this really well.
I fell into.
An old pattern, not as bad as it was at university, but not quite as compassionate as I would have liked to have been.
And it wasn't that bad. I think.
I think I missed a shot and I said something like, oh, you could have done better. You should have made that shot. And my son said to me, Daddy, don't talk to yourself like that. And it was so powerful because it helped catch me. And that wasn't that bad. Honestly, competitor, I like about it. That was good, but I thought, this is awesome, Like I hope my wife and I have brought him up in such a way that he is compassionate to himself. And he's heard me say something. He said, that's not nice, Daddy, don't talk to yourself like that. And it was a really special moment for me, a for me, but also for what I hope that I'm teaching him.
Rungan is so open and honest about how he's had to change many of his habits to improve his happiness. But there's one strategy above all others that he credits with making his daily life better. You'll share what that is when the Happiness lab returns in a moment. I often say that social interaction is the key to happiness, but you and I both know that people can kind of suck. They can make us angry or even make us feel disappointed. Doctor Runken Chatterjee says the biggest breakthrough in his happiness journey was to change how he dealt with these tricky interactions. It can be done, he says, by exercising our friction. So what exactly does that involve?
So we're social animals, right, It's very hard, I think, for us to be happy if our interactions with the world around us and the people around us are problematic, and a lot of the time we feel that we have to be a victim to the way the people around us act if they're not nice, or they criticize me, or they say certain things. While I have every right to feel down and depressed and unhappy, and that's what I used to think, but I've realized there is another option. The way you interact with people, the way you interact with the world. It comes down to you. You can interpret various situations and a multitude of different ways, and once you understand that, you empower yourself. So, just as you can go to the physical gym and do bicep curls or make your biceps bigger, will seeking out friction for me is working out of the social gym. You're using social friction with the world around you to make your social muscle stronger. So how does this play out for me? Well, any time something happens in my life that I don't like or I'm getting frustrated by, I think, well, what other story could I write here? Okay, instead of being a victim to this situation, how can I empower myself here? So let's say I'm driving somewhere and someone cuts me up on the road. Instead of saying that guy shouldn't be driving, they shouldn't have got their driving license, they need their eyes checked, I could have been hurt. Whatever story you want to create here, you're entitled to make whatever story you want. But if you have that sort of outlook, you're not going to be happy because you're going to generate emotional stress. You're not going to feel good, and that emotional stress will have to be neutralized at some point, and often we neutralize it with sugar, with more caffeine, with alcohol, with whatever, you know, our habit of choices. But we generated that emotional stress by the way we reacted. And once you want to sound that you don't need to react like that, you open up a new possibility of living. This is exactly what I've done, and when I really got this Lorry. Honestly, the conversation, out of all conversations I've had in my podcast, which is four hundred plus now, the one conversation I'd always come back to is the conversation I had with Edith Eager, who when I spoke to was a ninety three year old lady. When she was sixteen, she got put on a train to Auschwitz concentration camp. Within two hours of getting there, both of her parents were murdered. Later that afternoon, she was asked to dance in front of the senior prison guards. So she's in a concentration account. The parents have just been murdered, she's sixteen years old. She has to dance for the entertainment of the senior prison guards. And there's many things I remember from that conversation. But she said to me, when I had to dance for them, I wasn't in Auschwitz.
In my mind. I was in Budapest opera house.
I had a beautiful blue dress on the orchestra was playing, there was a full house. I remember Laurie thinking, you were able to do that in Alschwitz. Then in the conversation, she said, when I was in Auschwitz, I started to see the prison guards as the prisoners. They weren't free in their mind. In my mind I was free, and there was lots more. But at the end, this is the thing she said to me that I think about. I would say on most days, said wrongin I have lived in Auschwitz, and I can tell you that the greatest prison you will ever live inside is the prison you create inside your own mind. That phrase has changed my life because I realize that we all create these mental prisons every day by the way we interact. So that person who cuts me up on the road, instead of me being a victim to that situation, it's training myself to go, oh, I wonder what's going on in that person's life. Maybe that's a dad whose daughter was up last night with earache and they're exhausted and they think they're going to be late for work, and if they're late for work, they're going to get fired. You know, maybe they genuinely didn't see me. Whatever story you want. And here's the thing, Laurie that I've realized, and you know you're a psychologist. I'm interesting in your perspective on this. All situations I've realized have multiple realities. And I often talk to people about this through the lens of a couple's relationship. I say to people, let's say you're a husband and wife and you have a disagreement. Don't know if you ever know what that feels like, you know for people who experienced that, right, I say, Okay, well, you've had a disagreement stroke argument. What actually happens, Well, it kind of depends who you ask. If you ask the husband, he may give you a certain narrative and story about the situation that may be completely different to what his wife says, and they can both be right for them. There was this really great study on some psychologists where they found football fans and after the match, they showed them the same incident. Right, so they're saying, calmly watching the same incident, depending on which team you supported would determine what you think happened in that incident. And so the reason for me sharing that is you realize that every situation has multiple stories that you can create about it. Or what I say in the book is create the story that empowers you, not the story that makes you a victim. So this can be a very simple practice that people do in the evening or once a week. You reflect, where did I get really frustrated by someone and make them like a really bad person.
And one of the.
Tools I recommend is just saying what stories you need to create to make that person a hero. And here's the truth of the situation the way I see it, Lorrie, the truth of what actually happens for your happiness, it doesn't really matter for your happiness, it doesn't matter. And when you can let go of the need to be right and the need to know that person does have a driving license and they should have known that I was here, you never know. And I've been doing this for over five years now. I've been slowly using every bit of social friction in my life. In the evening, I'd reflect and go okay, wrong, And what's a different story that you can right here and yes. And at first it was an effort, like when you first learn to drive a car, if you're learning to drive a manual or what you guys call the stick I think stick share, yes, stake shift yet right, it's conscious you're thinking, this is the clutch, this is the accelerator. But what over time it's automatic. So now, genuinely speaking, most of the time, unless I'm on the really high levels of stress and or I'm sleep deprived, I will naturally write a happiness story. And it means that you feel good because you lead with compassion and curiosity. What's going on in that person's life? Does that all make sense?
No? Totally.
And I think when you do that, you do a couple of things. First, you end up often changing the other person's behavior. I imagine somebody cuts you off and you get to interact with them after. If you scream at them and stuff, you are going to turn them into a jerk. But if you say, are you okay? Like what happened? Like, if you just show it, like a tiny iota of compassion, often that will change someone's behavior. They will become the hero. They'll kind of want to behave in the way that you want. But another reason I just love this technique so much is that when you realize not just that these kind of construles are these ways of thinking about people, these sort of hero stories matter for your happiness, but when you also realize that you can get better at it, that this is a social gym and you can train, you can actually, in a funny way, become excited about these moments of social free one hundred percent where you're like, oh, somebody cut me off. This is a wonderful These are my reps today, Like I'm going to get extra reps. This is like leg day for social And.
What does this do if we think about the core happiness stool that I mentioned right, the starts, alignment, contentment, of control. Well, this does several things, but particularly this speaks to the control elements. If you feel that the social world is out of control, that people are acting in these sort of ways and you are basically just like a puppet on a string, that if someone acts badly, you're going to have a bad day. Just think about that for a minute. You're putting your happiness in the hands of other people. Now I get it. Of course, we want people to interact nicely with us, but you can't rely on that if you want to be happy. And you know another phrase which might help people here if they're struggling to write a hero story for the other person. This phrase literally is change my life. I think it's very powerful. If I was that other person, I'd be acting in exactly the same way as them. And when you really really get that phrase, what I'm saying is if I was that other person and I had their childhoods and the bullying they experience, and the parents they had, and the first boss at sixteen who was toxic and took advantage to be whatever it might be, if I had their life, I would see the world the way that they see it, and I would be acting in the way that they're currently acting.
Now. I choose to.
Go out in the world every day believing that everyone is doing the best that they can, and if I were them, I'd be acting in exactly the same way. For me, it's been a transformative practice because it means that you know what you're curious, You understand. You're thinking, why does that person think differently to me? Why is that person being rude in that situation? What has gone on in their life. It doesn't mean you have to accept poor behavior. Just to be really clear, but by not getting emotionally triggered, you feel better. You feel calmer and in control. And let's say it's your boss who send you a email that you don't like and you think is inappropriate. If you get emotionally triggered, you may fire one back that you regret, You may have an unproductive interaction with your boss because you're so emotionally triggered by it. But if you receive that email and you think, hmm, that's out of character for my boss, what's going on in his or her life? Oh, you know, maybe he's having marital problems, maybe he's worried about his or her job, whatever it might be, you just calm everything down and then if you do have the torture boss, you're better able to make changes because you've not been emotionally triggered. So that chapter, honestly is one of my favorite chapters in the book because I would say it's had the most impact on me. I realize how much I picked up from my parents, how much I thought that my feelings were because of the people around me, and I didn't quite really Actually, I've got a lot more agency here than I previously thought, and.
So I can see this just in interacting with you. But I'm going to ask the question anyway. Has kind of recognizing the agency you have to change your happiness really changed your overall sense of joy and well being. It seems like it just interacting with you.
Yeah, look on honestly, and again, I would have been too insecure to say this in the past because of how it might make people feel. But I also understand that how people feel is up to them. It's not that much to do with me. So I'm going to share something with you that if people feel bad about it, it says I think more about them.
And I say that with an open heart. Lorry.
I'm not blaming or criticizing anyone. I'm forty six years old. I've never felt happier and more content with who I am than I do today, and it's been like this for a couple of years now. I think writing this book on happiness has really helped me. You know, what do authors do. We often write the books that we need for ourselves.
Right.
That was absolutely the case with me. I was on that journey and writing it. Yes, I know it's helped a lot of people, but it's also helped me. And what I'm passionate about, what I've always been passionate about, is we make health, we make happiness so complicated we really don't need to. Like I do, think it's our birthright to be happy. I think if you look at a young child, a two or three year olds, they're in the moments they're playing with their toys or their siblings.
That happiness, that presence. I think it is something.
That all of us can get, but we need to know what to work on. That's why I created this model of the three legged store, because I think it's rather than thinking what can I do to be happy? I think, well, what we need to do is what can I do to improve my alignment? What can I do to improve my contentment? What can I do that gives me a sense of control? And if I can do those things regularly, I'm going to be happier more often.
Cool to hear how much it's changed your life, But I'm curious, given your status as a doctor in the UK and so on, like, do you think that more books like this are conld change the medical field? That is not just you, but really like the way we think about physical health is going to incorporate happiness even more.
I'm an optimist, okay, so I believe it will. And yes, I get contacted a lot by the public, but I've had hundreds, if not thousands of messages from medical doctors saying, wow, I had no idea about this stuff. Firstly, it's helping me with my own health and happiness, and it's also given me a tool kit to start introducing these conversations with my patients when appropriate. So I am optimistic. That's one of the reasons for writing the book. And there is a course that I teach to doctors called Prescribing Life Style Medicine, and we trained several thousand healthcare professionals now, and some of these concepts I'm bringing into the course because I think it's important, yes for patients, but also.
For the doctors themselves. Right.
I shared a very person sorry about my dad before, and that may seem extreme, you know, only sleeping three nights a week for thirty years, and yes, it is quite an extreme situation. But there is a version of that that I have seen regularly with so many patients, and that version is I'm working too hard I'm doing too much. I'm chasing this fictional idea of success. I already have enough. I've already got enough to feed my family. But I'm so used to pushing for the next thing that I keep going and I'm making myself sick. So that right, your own happy ending exercise. I think it's a damn good one for doctors to do on themselves, and I have used it with patients also because it helps them realize, oh, maybe I don't need to go for that promotion. Maybe I'm all right where I am.
You know.
I want to have this teacher who was a patient of mine, and I remember that he did this exercise and then he came in a few weeks later to say, Doc, I've got it. I'm not going for the promotion. I said, okay, great, he said yeah. I realized, like I quite like my current position, Like I earn enough, I can pay the mortgage, I get to spend time with my kids every weekend. If I take the promotion, yes, I'll get paid a little bit more, but actually I'll have to say extra evenings in the week at school and I'll be in at weekends. And I thought, awesome, Wow, I wish I'd been able to make those decisions at that age. So, you know, I think it can help patients, But in terms of the medical profession, I think that it is inevitable. At some point doctors will have to start understanding happiness and the skill of happiness better for themselves and for their patients because what we're doing is currently not working.
Doctors are stressed out.
There's record rates to burnout, there's record rates of people leaving the profession. There was a study in the UK recently that says eighty eight percent of the UK workforce has experienced a form of burnout in the past two years.
Now.
I don't know whether that's stat is truly reflexive of every workplace, but even if it isn't.
It's still pretty it's still pretty bad.
What does it say about as a society. So you know, when answer to your question, yes, I do see there's a movement now with more doctors being interested. You know, We've just been on stage at the Happiness Summits and there's been several doctors who've come up to me and spoken and saying, I'm using your book with my patients already, and I have been. It's making a real difference. So yes, I'm an optimist, but I do think the medical profession is starting to change. I wish it would change a bit sooner, a bit quicker, but I think it's going to happen.
Ringan, thank you so much for coming on the show, and thank you so much for the great work that you're doing.
Well, Laurie.
It's been an honor to come on your wonderful podcast, and you literally are a trailblazer in the world of happiness, and you've inspired a lot of my work over the year.
So you're with these an honest to meet you in person to come on the show.
Thanks again, Yeah, yeah, our great audience standing ovation. Doctor Rungin Chatterjee was just one of the inspiring people I met at the World Happiness Summit. I also spent a bunch of time with the events founder, Karen Guggenheim, and I got to hear how a painful bereavement kick started her mission to improve global happiness.
My husband caught the flu, which developed into a pneumonia, and within ten days he was gone, Okay, well I'm done. And I don't think that I was suicidal at all in that regard, but I think we can be a live dead, just being numb to life.
That's all to come next time on a happiness lab with me, Doctor Laurie Santos,