2 Ways to Create Healthy Boundaries & Why You're Wasting Your Time Trying to Change How Someone Thinks of You

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Jay, welcome to the podcast Rangit.

Thanks so much. I was looking forward to being with you in person after having met you in la, but this is, this is great, man. Thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate it.

Hey, no worries at all. I always like to give a bit of perspective to people listening or watching. So I'm currently in the uk. I'm in my garden in my brand new podcast studio. Okay. We've got a California esque day at the moment in the uk. It's nice and sunny with a cool breeze, so maybe you could share where you're chatting from. What's going on? How's your morning been so far?

Absolutely. So I'm actually in la, but yeah, I'm in exactly the same place. It's a beautiful California day, Louisiana day. And yeah, the skies are blue, the birds tweeting away. So yeah, it's a beautiful day.

Oh, fantastic. Well, good bit of perspective for everyone. And you know, we met face to face when I came on your podcast, I don't know, about a year ago, something like that. And I'll be wanting to talk to you for a long time because the content you put out on the Internet is really transformative and has changed the lives of so many people. And, you know, I was intrigued as to what I was going to get when your book turned up because I thought, well, this guy's videos are incredible and they help us sort of reframe our perspective on life. But I've got it here in front of me and I left you, I think, a WhatsApp message a couple of weeks ago because frankly, I was so impressed. It's such a wonderful book. It's full of insight, it's full of practical knowledge and wisdom that I think is going to help a wide variety of different people. Now, what I'm looking at it in front of me, it's called think like a monk, Train your mind for peace and purpose every day. And I think that subtitle really grabbed my attention because it starts with train your mind. Now, I think most people in society are familiar with the concept that we can train our bodies, right? So we know if we want to get stronger, we can go to the gym, we can lift weights, we want to get faster, build endurance, we can go running. But I'm not sure that people commonly think that their minds can be trained. I wonder if you would agree with that. And I wonder if you could expand as to why you think all of us have the ability to train our minds.

Rangan, I think you're right. I think you are spot on when you say that you don't believe that.

We all know the fact that we.

Can train our minds. And one of the reasons for that is growing up in England. Obviously. I was born and raised in London. We had pe. Everyone went to physical education class. We were encouraged to play sports, but there was no class for the mind. You never went to mind class. You never went to mind school. And even when we grew up, there was no class for the mind. Even when we learned about biology, it was very much about cells and plants. And I feel as humans we've developed such a fascination for the outer world, but we haven't developed so much of a focus on our inner space. And I think there's such a need there in what you're encouraging us to do as well. And what the book's trying to help people do is recognize that each and every single one of us need to and can train our mind. So one of my favorite examples is if you wanted to learn how to play basketball, you'd probably want to learn from Michael Jordan, someone who's dedicated their life to the craft. If you wanted to learn how to drive a Formula one car, you'd go to Lewis Hamilton because, I mean, he's undisputed the best in the world of all time. If you wanted to learn how to play tennis, you'd probably go to Federer or Nadal or Djokovic, right? There's so many great players and names and athletes. Or maybe you go to Serena Williams. If you wanted to learn about business, you'd go to the founder of Bumble. There are so many incredible entrepreneurs, athletes in the world who are experts in what they do. But when you think about it and you say, well, I want to learn about the mind. And not just learn about the mind, but work with people who focused on mastering the mind. The true answer is that that's monks. Monks have dedicated their life to mastering the mind. To the point that studies on monks brains show the highest form of gamma waves, which are linked to happiness, attention, focus. When they scan monks brains, they find the ability to flip focus from one thing to another, like the flip of a switch. Now most of us can experience that we don't have that ability. And so when we Go to learn from monks. We realize, through my journey, through other people's journey, who have learned these principles and practices, that this is up for anyone and everyone, whether they live in a small village in the countryside or whether they live in a big city. Anyone can think like a monk.

That's an important topic, I think, to really delve into, because I'm sure a lot of people listening to this, watching it right now will be thinking, hey, good for you, mate. You went off to be a monk, you went to India, and we'll explore your story there for sure. But I'm busy, you know, I've got my kids to take care of. I'm holding down two jobs. You know, I don't have time to think like a monk. And so if somebody is skeptical and is thinking that at the moment, what would you say to them?

First of all, I'd say if that's how you feel, then you are completely entitled to your opinion and I respect it. I genuinely have no desire to want to convince anyone to try a new thing out or a new method that they have very little time for or don't fill the space for. But even if there's a glimpse of an opening in your mind, even if there's a tiny little bit of curiosity where you're like, I know I don't have time, but I think there could be something in this, well, then this is what I'd say to you. I'd say that we will continue to create the life that we currently have with the current set of thoughts, wisdom, beliefs and ideas that we have. And if we're happy on that path, if you could fast forward your life in 10, 20, 30 years time and you'd be satisfied with getting the life that you have right now, then that's great. But if, like the majority of people that I know and that I speak to and that I connect with online, the majority of us would look and go, no, I really want to change life. I want to be with my kids, but I want to change how I am with them. I want to be at work, but I want to be more present at work. I want to improve the quality of my life. Then I'd say that it's so important that we learn and open up our minds to alternative thoughts. I'll give you an example. There was this great study that MIT did on people's minds openness and their ability to be creative and innovative. And they looked at two types of people. One person was surrounded by people who all knew the same people, right? Kind of like our normal lives.

And.

And the other person was surrounded by lots of people who didn't know each other. And they did the study around who is more creative, more innovative, and has a bigger impact in the workplace, in their professional life, and then a little bit into their personal life as well. And what they found was that those people who knew people, who knew each other, who knew them back, lived in what was known as echo chambers. They were rarely exposed to ideas that improved their way of living or their professional performance. But people who were exposed to ideas that had no connection with other people in their life were able to be more creative, have better ideas, have more purpose, have more meaning in life. So often we've become closed in our little spaces around what we hear, what we know about, and we're not exposed to this new sense of ideas. And that's what I would encourage is just approach it with when a tiny bit of curiosity. That's all you need.

Yeah. So beautifully put. And I'd absolutely, wholeheartedly agree with that support that I think the tools in your book, frankly, will help anyone. There's tools in there that are gonna help me. There's tools in there that will help someone in a different role, a different state of life. Because I think there's a lot of universal themes there. And I really wanna explore and talk about some practical things throughout this conversation, Jay. But you know, I'm interested that many people have a crisis in their life from time to time. It might be a midlife crisis, a quarter life crisis, and, you know, they may go away for a weekend, they may go and buy a new car, but you had a form of crisis and you went off to be a monk in India. Right. So I'd love to understand what happened there, you know, what led you to that. Because I think a lot of people, I wouldn't say it was, it's extreme, but it's going all in, right? And it's fantastic because I don't think, until I met you, I don't think I've ever met a monk before. So, you know, maybe you could expand on what happened there.

Yeah, absolutely. And I was going to say something, Ranga, that from your earlier question of, you know, the real premise or the real foundation of this book is that you don't need to live like a monk to think like a monk. What I've done is I've taken the lessons and the principles and all the teachings that I had and made them really relevant and practical for modern life. So you don't have to Go and do the journey that I did in order to learn some of these. Now, my journey was definitely from a place of curiosity. And it started off not with a sense of pain, but or stress or pressure in my personal life, because I was fairly young at the time. And of course, I'd been exposed to the different things you do growing up in a family and normal challenges growing up. But really what it was for me is I was surrounded by a lot of friends that were older than me. And my friends were sometimes two years older, Some of them were five years older, some of them were getting married, some of them had great jobs, some of them were making good money. And it's really interesting that they were really honest with me and they would open up and say to me, jay, you know what? I've got this perfect partner, I've got this perfect job, I've got this perfect situation, but I'm still not happy. And I'd be sitting there as a young teenager going, how can you not be happy? I mean, you know, you've got a beautiful partner, you're making good money, you drive a nice car, you have a nice home. How is it that you're not satisfied? And it was so interesting to me to be exposed to a group of people that I thought had it all, but felt like they didn't have anything. And then when I was invited to hear a monk speak, and I was fascinated at the time by hearing CEOs, entrepreneurs, athletes. My two first books that I ever read were David Beckham's autobiography and Dwayne the Rock Johnson autobiography, when he was still in the WWF and the wwe. And I was fascinated by rags to riches stories and people who went from nothing to something. And then I was invited to hear a monk speak. And I genuinely had this complete dismissive demeanor about what monks could teach me. And my approach was, well, what am I going to learn from a monk? How to sit still? What has a monk even achieved? And so when I went to hear this monk speak, I went there with no expectations. But the amazing thing is that I found that someone who had nothing actually had everything. He had contentment, he had satisfaction. He exuded it. And when he spoke, he spoke with such compassion and empathy. And I thought, I've never heard any of my friends speak like this. I've never experienced someone have this. And now when I reflect back, I realize very clearly that when I was 18, I'd met people who were rich. I'd met people who are beautiful and stunning and attractive. I'd met people who were famous and successful. I'd met people who are really smart and intellectual, but I don't think I'd ever met anyone who was truly happy. And even if you reflect in your own life, anyone who's listening or watching right now, just think about it for a moment. Who in your life would you genuinely say you believe is content and happy and joyful? I'm guessing you probably count them on your hand. And for me, that monk was the first person that I met that really exuded that and I wanted to learn more. So for me, it wasn't about being in a major life crisis. It wasn't about things not working out. It was from the perspective of learning through the challenges of my friends who were thankfully so honest with me, that helped me question what I thought life was all about.

Yeah, thank you for sharing that, Jay, because as you sort of describe that, I think many of us I know, I have throughout my life looked at various parameters of success. When you're a kid growing up, what you're surrounded by influences so much of what you think is possible in the world. And I've said this before, and as a sort of fellow Indian, sort of child of an Indian immigrant family in the uk, the certain pressures and the certain expectations that often come with that. And if I'm honest, I've often reflected back on this and I say to people, you know, because being a doctor is deemed, you know, by society as a successful career choice, but I say to people, you know what? You're so lucky. You're so this, and I am lucky. But really, I was influenced by my childhood. I was influenced by my upbringing because all my parents, friends were doctors. So all the adults I knew pretty much growing up, apart from my schoolteachers, were doctors. So therefore, it was an, you know, for me, it was a natural progression to then become a doctor. But I will tell you this, as I become more in tune with what makes people happy, with what makes me happy. Honestly, if I look around in the medical profession, I see a lot of unhappy people. I see a lot of people doing what they thought they should do, what society has told them is going to make them happy, what their parents had told them is going to make them happy. And they're doing it, and they may be making reasonable money and as you say, have the house and have the car, but often underneath that, there's a feeling of discontentment. And, you know, I've been realizing this in my probably 30s, late 30s, but you, I guess, would you, in some ways to experience it I think you're in your teens, right?

I mean, I was 18 years old when I first had that interaction. I just explained.

Yeah, because I mean, I wonder if you sort of think back and that is clearly a significant fork in the road for you because had you not, do you ever think back, what would have happened had I not gone to that talk?

I have thought about that a lot and I think we should, I think we should reflect on life like that. It really makes you grateful. And I always look back at that day is a very humbling day because, you know, I went there with my egotistic, arrogant, 18 year old nature of what am I going to learn from this guy? And then obviously that becomes the best decision of my life. And so life's humbling in that way, right? Like, I don't look back at that good day and go, oh, I made the best decision and I'm such an amazing person. I look back and go, wow, I was so, so arrogant and did not realize how much I could learn from this individual. And it's almost like this ironic moment, but I think about it all the time. I think if I didn't go that day or I didn't meet monks, or I didn't meet people who were trying to live on a higher frequency or a higher vibration, I believe that I would have ended up chasing all the normal things that I was chasing in terms of stability, security. I probably would have had a comfortable job and done just okay and you know, life would have been fine. But I really feel that the life I get to live today, which is a life of service and purpose and meaning, is what I would have missed out on. And there are so many times in my life where I wonder what life would have been like and, and I'm just grateful that I met the right people at the right time. And this is really what this book is about, that the reason why I called it Think Like a Monk and the reason why I've gone into the depth around the wisdom and the practices that I have is we don't realize how much we're not experiencing in life. Like you said, we all grow up in this bubble. Like if you grew up in, where I grew up, North London, it's a very specific bubble. And then if you grew up in England, it's a very specific bubble. And then you grew up in the United States, in New York, Louisiana, it's a bubble. And we live in these bubbles. And the challenge with a bubble is that you never really understand if there's something out there that could change your experience of life. And for me it's so random to have met a monk at 18. Like you said, you've never experienced or met a monk before. And I'm not a monk anymore. So you still haven't met a monk. We have to find Rangan, someone for you to meet. But you know, it's that point of just what is it in the world that we haven't experienced that could expand our mind and take us on a different journey. And I think that's the goal is you may not need a monk in your life, but who or what or which idea is it in your life that you haven't yet let in?

Yeah. And I think what you speak to there is the importance of staying curious and keeping somewhat of an open mind. And I think that is something that we see across society now that I think it's becoming incredibly problematic where people are stuck in their little silos and they don't look beyond that. They're very quick to judge other people who have a different view. They're very quick to, to sort of shut people down unless it fits with their narrative. And I think really what I'm hearing from you is staying curious, staying open minded, looking, listening to other people's ideas. It's like you said at the start, right? You're not trying to persuade anyone to do anything. But if you're a bit curious, maybe there's an idea that someone's going to hear throughout this conversation that just sparks something for them. Very much like I guess you had when you were 18. Jay, I think one of the first times I came across you was a few years back. I heard you on an interview. So I can't remember what the interview was, but I remember being really impacted by what you said and thinking, who is this guy? I mean, this is pretty incredible what I heard. And it was, it wasn't one of your videos. You were talking a lot about, I think identity. And I think it was something about it really got me thinking about what is my identity. I guess I was on a journey then anyway, since I lost my father about seven years ago now. I think that was one of the significant moments in my life that got me to start questioning everything, thinking about, well, who am I? Am I living my life or am I living somebody else's life? I think you expressed it so beautifully. But then when I read your book, I think you start off very early on with identity. So I wonder if you could expand on identity. What is it? And why do you think many of Us need to spend a bit of time thinking about it.

Yeah. So I think I know exactly which interview you're talking about and what I say in it. The monks start with identity. And at the root of the issue, because a lot of what we experience in the world today, as you know and I know how holistic you are in the way you advise your patients. When you were speaking on my podcast, I was so impressed by you and how you're able to tie in so many psychological and natural practices and relational exercises that can improve people's health and wellbeing overall. I remember you talking about encouraging your clients to see more friends as a way of changing the way they feel. And I was thinking, wow, this person's got so many great ideas. And the reason is because, Rangan, you also have that monk mindset. Or if you go to the root of the issue, it's really easy to just say, oh, well, just take two of these a day or try this, or, you know, maybe you need to do this. But when you think about it from the root perspective, where do our challenges arise? And our challenges arise by how we see ourselves. And what I believe Rang, it's referring to is there's this quote that I begin my book with and that I've shared in interviews for the last few years. And it's from a writer named Charles Horton Cooley who wrote this in the 1900s. And what he said is that, Sorry, I think it's in the 1800s, at the end of the 1800s, towards the 1900s. And he said, and bear with me, and you've got to really listen closely to this. So what he said that the challenge today is, I'm not what I think I am. I'm not what you think I am. I am what I think you think I am. Now, just let that blow your mind for a moment. I will explain it, I promise. I'm not what I think I am. I'm not what you think I am. I am what I think you think I am. Which means we live in a perception of a perception of ourselves. So I'll break it down. If I think Rangan thinks I'm smart, I'll say I feel smart. But if I think Rangan thinks I'm not smart, then I'll say I'm not smart. And so the challenge is that we're basing how we feel about ourselves on what we think someone thinks of us. And the greatest challenge with that is, how do you have any idea if what you think someone thinks about you is even True. And whether that's even the best place to start. So that's where our identity struggles. We start pursuing things in life because we think other people value them. It's almost like, let's think of the most playground version of this. If I remember wearing high tech shoes from BHS to the playground, right? I remember my mom because my parents didn't buy me Nike trainers or Adidas trainers, which I always wanted. You know, we didn't come from that background. I couldn't, couldn't afford them and my parents didn't want me to have them. So I'd walk in with my high tech trainers from BHS. They're about 10 quid or whatever they were. And, and, and you know, to me it didn't make a difference. I didn't really know at that time whether high tech was good or bad. They were just trainers that my parents bought me. Now everyone, the cool kid at school had the latest Nike trainers. All of a sudden I start thinking that he's now surrounded by everyone. Everyone's talking about his trainers, everyone's giving him adoration, everyone's giving him respect. Everyone's talking about his trainers. So now I think that if I want to have that same experience and love from people that I need to get that not realizing that I may be able to get deeper love from people by being kind and compassionate, that I may actually be able to build a real relationship with people if I'm loving and considerate and empathetic. And it's so crazy how your life can become about pursuing something. And that's why Jim Carrey puts it best. And I'm paraphrasing, he says, you know, everyone in the world should achieve everything they've ever wanted and accomplish everything they've ever pursued just to realize that it's not the point. Now that doesn't mean the monk mindset is not about not pursuing your goals. It's actually about pursuing your truest goals, your truest self, and your most authentic aligned goals. So it's not about not having goals. It's about making sure that your goals are actually yours. Hey friends, quick question.

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I think. I can't say for sure where I was when I heard that interview, but I think I was on a train from Manchester to London, or London back to Manchester. And I think I pressed pause and I think I wrote it in my notes. I think, I'm pretty sure I wrote it and I rewound it. I played it again, I thought, hold on, I've got the first bar. Second part, what's that third part? And I really had to sit with it for a while. And I would urge people, if they need to press pause right now, listen to it and really think about it. And I think, you know, it's really interesting, you know, hearing that. And I reflect on my children, who I know you had a very brief, lovely conversation with just before we started. I might put that in at the end of the podcast, maybe it was beautiful. But I think about this as they go through school and they start to see what other people have got. And my wife and I were very keen to try and not put value on those things because I know I also had experiences like that. What I'd say, oh God, man, they're Wearing those things. I want to wear those because if I wear them, I'm going to be happy. I saw a, maybe a year ago or so, I saw a Gary Vaynerchuk video online when he was telling someone at one of his conferences, he was, you know, he was talking about a BMW and he basically said to the guy in his, you know, in his inimitable way, which is wonderful, that I think you own a BMW because of what other people will think of you when you drive that BMW. And the guy literally, you know, in that clip, he just sort of sat with it and he said, yeah, I do. I mean, it's what it symbolized is to people around him. And again, I'm not having to go at anyone who might be doing that. You know, we all do things at times to get that validation or what we think is the validation from people around him. But I think what you're trying to get at is how do we find our own identity? How do we live our own lives? So, Jay, how do we do that if we spend a lifetime living someone else's life? How do we, in our 30s or our 20s or our 40s or our 50s, how do we just decide, oh, I'm going to start finding out what my life is?

Yes, absolutely. And I love the tone you're sharing this in, Rangan, because my tone's the same. Like, you know, I'm not coming at this from a point of view of, you know, we're wasting our lives. Or I've got it figured out. Like, I don't want to make this about you not getting your goals or not having pursuits or not wanting to become something, because I want to do all those things too. But it's about why you're doing it. And it's also about making sure they're truly motivated by your inner desire. Right? Like, that's the point. It's like, if you want to drive a BMW, drive a BMW because that's the car you love. Don't drive it because you think if you want to be a doctor, become a doctor because you think that's how you're going to serve humanity, not because you think people will be impressed. If you want to go to Harvard or Princeton or Oxford or Cambridge, go there because you really want to study how to solve the world's problems, not because you think it looks good on your resume. Right? That's the point that we're going after. So thank you, Rangan, for like recentering that, that tonal piece. And I, I appreciate it. But so where do we start? One of my favorite ways to start is looking at what we value. And values are a very intangible word. And so there's a very easy way to figure out what you value. There's two things you have to look at. You look at how you spend your money. The most painful thing you can possibly do, go through your bank statement and look at where your money is being spent. That is what you value. The other thing that we spend, just like we spend money, is how we spend our time. Those are the two most perfect ways to see what you currently value. Your value isn't what's in your head, isn't what's in your heart, isn't what's in your mind. It's how you spend your money and how you spend your time. And so, just to give you an overview, and I share this in the book, that research was done on how we spend our time. And the research showed that we spent 33 years in bed, right? 33 years of our life in bed, and seven years of that is spent trying to sleep. Not even sleeping, right? We spend one year and four months exercising across our whole lives. These are, by the way, we spend more than three years on vacation, and we spend a bunch of days trying to get ready, and we spend a bunch of time, you know, standing in lines and queues. And so much of our time just gets spent. So the question we have to ask ourselves is, where am I currently spending my time and where do I want to spend it? Now, studies also show that people, everyone has to go to work. So this isn't about what you do for work. People who had more meaningful, purposeful lives and were healthier, wealthier, and wise invest their time in education over entertainment. And Rangan. Your, your audience is lucky because they get education, entertainment in one place. But that's the goal, right? Like, that's the goal that you're creating an opportunity for people to find education. The smartest, the wealthiest, the most healthiest, the wisest people in the world. Reading books, watching documentaries, taking courses, listening to podcasts, learning to better themselves. And so that's the first place to start. The second place, when we look at that value audit is I want you to write down three things that you're currently pursuing in life. It might be a promotion, it might be a new home, whatever it is, whatever it is that you are currently pursuing. And then I want you to ask this question. Is that your desire and your dream, or is it coming from something outside of you? Is it coming from a pressure of a family member, is it coming from an expectation because your friend just bought something? Where is that desire truly coming from? And the third and final question you want to ask yourself is, do I still want to pursue that or do I want to change how I pursue it, or do I not want to pursue it at all? And if you go through that three step questioning process, you'll get to the truth of what you truly want to pursue and stop yourselves from building a sand castle which the waves of time will eventually wash away. And so that's what we get lost doing. We get lost building castles that we don't even want to live in.

Yeah, it's so profound. And you know, I really think that there's something unique about the times in which we live now. There really is this dissatisfaction, this lack of contentment. You know, you put it so beautifully at the start of this conversation. I don't know if you've seen the documentary Minimalism.

I haven't actually.

Or not, which I think you'd absolutely love it. I really, really enjoy it. I've seen it a couple of times. I've watched it with my kids again recently. But again it's these two guys in their 30s who, they've got success by society's definition. They've got the job, they're earning good money, but there's a hole inside. There's a feeling of, is this all there is to life? And so I really think you're tapping on something that is, that is really out there at the moment. And really, if people can get their heads around this, I think it can transform their own lives, but also transform the lives of the people around them, which I think is really, really exciting. Now, you call it a value audit. Now I thought that word was really interesting because I have been sort of. I had sort of nearly three weeks off social media until two days ago. I didn't post, I went off, I made a thing of it and I found that I found it a lot easier to go inward in my life. It was just one thing to switch off a bit of noise for me. I'm not saying everyone has to do this. It's just something I personally find useful. And I also like to. I think it's a nice example to set to people that you can do it if you want to. But what was really interesting is I've been doing a values exercise with myself. I've been trying to write down five core values that I want to live my life by. And it really struck me that a lot of people And I probably include myself in this, have got an idea of what we think our values are. But unless we actually go and audit the process of what are we spending our time and money doing, we have no idea if we really are living those values. So I really like the term audit because it's not your perception of how you think you're actually spending your money or spending your time. It's the reality of it. And I think it's something that I haven't done it. And I think I'm going to do it. I think I'm going to actually see is it aligned with what you say you stand for? Are you actually spending time like that? So is this a common thing? Do you think for people that there is a gap between their desired values and their actual values?

I genuinely believe, first of all, Rangan, thank you for sharing that too. And I genuinely believe that people are well intentioned and want to do good in the world. I believe that. I believe that people have a good heart, they're smarter than we think they are, they want to do good in the world and they want to put out good energy. But you're exactly right that that intention needs to be converted and transferred into real behavior. And this is where you'll find, you know, you'll hear a friend or someone you know say, oh, you know, I really value loyalty and I really don't like gossip. And then you find out that that person was gossiping about you. And how does that feel? It completely feels like someone's broken your trust. And so often the way we see ourselves or want to see ourselves is amplified compared to how we actually behave. So we'll spot something. And there's a beautiful story that I share in the book and there's lots of these across the book, but there's these old ancient Indian and Zen stories. And there's this story of the evil king that goes to meet a good king. So the evil king goes to the castle, the quarters of the good king. And the good king, being a good king, invites the evil king inside for some dinner. They sit down, the servants bring out the plates. The plates are placed in front of the evil king and the good king. And they're just about to eat. And as, just about as they were about to eat, the evil king switches the plates and the good king goes, what's going on? Like, is that some ceremony in your time? Like, look, why are we doing this? And the evil king goes, well, I don't know, you might have poisoned my food. You might be trying to Kill me. You might have poisoned it. And the good king just bursts out laughing. He's just like, really? Like, come on, this. Like, I've invited you over for dinner. Like, this is my team. Like, you know, whatever it is, like, let's start eating right now. And just about as he's about to eat, the evil king swaps it back again. And the good king goes, well, now what then? And he goes, well, I don't know, you might be double bluffing me. And that night, the evil king doesn't eat. The good king happily eats his plate. The point is that so often we think we don't have some of the mistakes that we make, but we see them in everyone else. We see those mistakes in other people. So we'll say, oh, this person's not doing this right, or, I don't like the way he or she talked to that person. But if we really do an audit in ourselves, we'll realize that we have a lot of those same challenges and feelings that we may think others have. And so for me, it's sometimes a really scary and daunting task to do that values audit. But it truly, truly is a beautiful process that we all need to go through to really realign our map and get our compass right and start moving in the right direction.

I mean, is it the sort of thing that people do once, or is it the sort of thing that people should revisit? And I guess, you know, if I was to ask you, when was the last time you did that exercise on yourself?

Yeah, great question. So I'd say that you have to revisit, like, gardening. If you look at your garden outside and I can see a bit. I can see a, like, little glimpse of Rangan's garden. But if you have a garden, how often do you have to garden? Maybe you mow the lawn. I don't know, once a week, once a month. I don't know. You know, whatever. Whatever you.

Yeah, I'd say once a week I like a nice, you know, shortish lawn. I don't like it when it gets too long.

So there you go. Once a week. And so I'd say that you have to treat this exercise like gardening, because when you do a values audit, what you're really doing is gardening your values. And what that means is you're pulling out the weeds and you're planting new seeds. That's really the activity that's happening here. You're planting seeds in your mind. Values that are good, values that are going to grow into fruits and trees and Give shade to others and help other people. Or if you don't garden once a month, let's say Rangan leaves his. He doesn't bother for the last six months during COVID He just lets it be there. What's going to happen? That garden is going to be full of weeds. It's going to be full of stuff that he doesn't want there. Right. It might attract bugs or other things that are there that he doesn't want. And that's what happens with our values, that after a while our values start to attract dust. They start to attract being covered over by so many other desires. So I would say it's a regular habit. I'd say that I do a refining values and intention exercise on myself about three times a week. I used to do it every day, but probably about three times a week. And I'm not saying anyone has to do it that often. I do it that often because I feel I live a life that is constantly moving, constantly challenging, and I'm presented with a lot of options and opportunities that I never imagined I'd have. And so I have to really train my mind to focus on these value audits. But I also know that every year I spend two or three year, two or three weeks, and I go back to the monastery in India and I spend time in the ashram with monks. And so I feel this is both an activity that happens weekly or monthly. I'd say once a month. I'd say the best way is to treat it like your accounts and your taxes. Look at it every month, look at your bank statement every month. And then once a year, when you have to do your taxes and you're going through that tax return and getting it all right, you kind of do a deep dive on it. So I'd say if everyone could spend three days a year, five days a year, going really deep, and then one hour a month, a couple of hours a month, that would be a great way to build it into your practice.

Yeah. Now I just want to contrast it with taxes and accounts, which can often be quite tedious and, you know, tear your hair out type exercises for people, full of pressure. I would sort of say that the kind of practices that are. That your book is jam packed full of practical tools for people. Once you get into this way of thinking, once you start thinking like a monk, these practices become fun, right?

Yes.

Like a lot of. As a doctor, one of the things that frustrates me is that everything around health, let's say working out, for example, tends to be around punishing yourself and pushing yourself and suffering. And so we start to associate things that are good for us as being difficult and as being punishing. But actually, all the tools in your book are going to be good for everyone. They're really going to help people. But I would actually say that they're fun. And if I just speak to my own experience over the last seven years of really again, since my dad died, diving into personal growth, not because it was like, oh, dad's not here now I'm going to do some personal growth. No, it was just in the trauma of dad's death, in the sort of emptiness I felt afterwards, that's where I went. I sort of needed that pain on one level to then get me to start asking questions. But I love the process of getting to know myself better. I love doing these audits. I love trying to figure out my values, potentially almost getting addicted to it. Like it feels good. And then you start to, I feel you start to switch off from the noise around you and you really start to become tuned in to who you are and what makes you tick.

Learning about ourselves is actually the most fun thing in the world. It's the most enjoyable thing in the world when you find out about a new way that your mind works and how this value is going to unlock this opportunity in your life. Rangan's spot on. It's such a exciting thing to do and I would encourage you to make it fun. So I'll tell you an example of some of the fun activities that I love in the book. So one of my favorite ones is I sometimes set myself the challenge of not comparing, not complaining and not criticizing. And the way I like to do this test is I keep a jar of post it notes of every time I compare, complain or criticize. I'll put it in there and then I have another jar of every time I'm collaborative, supportive to others and grateful. And what I love doing is almost doing a competition with myself because I love being competitive too. I love engaging that in a competition with myself. Of how often can I make sure? So what you find is the first day you realize, oh no, I complained 10 times today. The second day you're like, oh, I only did seven times to the end. The third day you're like, only did four. And the fourth day you're like, oh, only once. And then on the weekend you binge complain again and it all goes up again. But the point is that you make it fun and enjoyable because what you understand is that you are not your criticism you are not these negative thoughts. You are not these negative beliefs. They've just become conditioned and habits, just as your garden is not weeds. And what happens is we start thinking that we are our pain. We start thinking that we are stress. Right? We say things like, I am just a stressful person. Right. I am just a negative person. And the truth is, you're not. You're just going through a negative space and time. You're just adopted a negative habit or a negative thought. But you are not a negative person. It's just in the same way, you are not unhealthy. You've just adopted unhealthy habits. And I think when you start making that disconnect between you and the habits you have, you start to realize, oh, if I change the habits, I naturally change, but you are separate from that. So never get into that. Never get into that rhetoric with yourself of I am a negative person or I am a failure or I am a loser or whatever it may be.

Yeah, I think it's so important that, Jay, that our thoughts are important, our words are important, and I think many people, once you become tuned into it, when you start to identify where you're using negative self talk, it becomes so easy to identify everyone around you. It's something that I spent a lot of time thinking about, both for myself personally, for bringing up my children. It's something we talk about a lot at the dinner table, about how we're saying things, because words are powerful. Words become thoughts, and they sort of. Can you mention those things? People often do think that they are their pain, they are their feelings, without realizing that these things are transient, they come and go, and you are actually separate from that. But if you define yourself by that, it becomes very hard to change.

You mentioned.

I guess, a lot of words that people who have a victim mindset may say. And I want to explore this because I want to be super clear. I think one thing I love about your approach, and certainly the approach that I sort of try and take, is one of compassion. It's not one of judgment of other people. It's understanding. If someone behaves in a certain way, there's probably conditioning or reasons that has led to that. So when I say victim mindset, I really don't mean that in a demeaning way. I mean that in a. A lot of people say, oh, this always happens to me. Oh, God, I never get that promotion. Right. And so the way we think and the way we talk, how influential is our childhood and, you know, what can we do about it? If we've spent a lifetime practicing that, yeah.

What a great way of guiding this conversation into. Because I think you're spot on that the words we use create all of our reality. Right. We all experience that. We know that. And there's a few things that I want to touch on here, actually. One is the understanding. There's a Harvard study that I refer to in my book, and it's called the Emotional List or List of Emotions, which. But I call it Emotional Vocabulary. And what I realized is that we all have a very limited emotional vocabulary. For example, if you ask someone how things are going, there's literally five words that we use more often than anything else. Okay. Good, bad, Fine. Hmm. So someone goes, how's your day going?

Okay.

How's your week been?

Good.

Is everything going well?

Hmm.

Right. It's like, literally, like, those are our responses. And what this Harvard Emotional Vocabulary List does is that it shows you that inside every word that you say, there are so many more meanings. So let's take the word sad, for example. And what it does is it shows you other feelings of sadness that help you better pinpoint how you actually feel. So the question then is, do you feel sad or do you feel offended? Do you feel upset? Do you feel disappointed? Do you feel irritated? Do you feel like you've been let down? The challenge is that we don't diagnose how we feel effectively. Therefore, we can't articulate and communicate to the people we love effectively about how we feel. And therefore, we don't get what we expect from others. And so we almost create. And Rangan, you probably see this all the time. Imagine someone tries to diagnose their health condition without seeing a doctor. It becomes really, really challenging. And the challenging with the mind is sometimes you have to diagnose your own feelings because you can't just walk in to a doctor's office and expect them to do it because it's a little more intangible. So we have to get much better at understanding and articulating ourselves and diagnosing our challenges in what we experience. But when you spoke about childhood there, I thought that was a really important point because literally, there are so many studies that show that our belief in ourselves, our desire for love, our understanding of ourselves, is formed in our childhood. So recently, I recorded an episode about the psychological concept of the three attachment styles. Or there are four, but the three prominent attachment styles that people experience in relationships, and they are avoidant, secure, and anxious. So all of us either have an avoidant relationship attachment style. We have a secure attachment style, or we have an anxious attachment style. And I'll explain what they are. If your parents were avoidant of you, if they didn't give you attention, if they didn't give you presence and intimacy, then you often will crave that from your partner. So what you want from your partner is exactly what you did or didn't receive from your parents. So sometimes you receive something from your parents and now you demand it from your partner. And sometimes you didn't receive something from your parents and you demand that from your partner. The secure attachment style is when your parents or one of your parents or a father or mother figure in your life gave you substantial amounts of love. So you feel secure, so you trust your partner, naturally. And the third and final is anxious. That's when your parents were kind of there, kind of not there, kind of let you down sometimes with their. You were confused about their love approach to you. And therefore now you have this anxiousness around your partner and you're not sure whether they love you or not. Now notice how all of that comes from our conditioning at childhood. And so the first step we have to do is we have to be aware of this, right? No one's ever been taught about this. In school, I saw so many negative patterns that I'd adopted from my childhood that I was projecting into my relationship. And by the way, I don't blame my parents or anyone's parents for any of this. I think the point is no one ever knows how to be a parent and what they're doing. And everyone makes mistakes. So this isn't about questioning your parents or being bitter towards them. It's about developing the emotional skills your parents didn't have. And that, first of all requires awareness. Are you even aware of what patterns you've adopted from your parents that you like or don't like? Do you behave in certain irrational ways? And when you think about it, you're like, that's exactly how my dad used to talk to me, or that's exactly how my mom used to talk to me. I often talk about a positive thing. So I love surprises. I love surprises, like from. For gifts and birthdays and events. And the reason is my mom always surprised me with the toy I most wanted on my birthday every year growing up. So when I met my wife without explaining this to her, I expected her to know that. And she would never surprise me because it wasn't in her parental background. So I used to feel on my birthdays when we first met that she didn't love Me. And I know this sounds crazy, but it's literally true. It's like I literally felt like she didn't care about me, but that's because I never understood why. I like surprises, where that came from, and I never communicated that to her. Does that make sense?

RANGER hey, more sense than you would know for sure. I mean, I can think back to my own relationship and think to all kinds of ways that actually, and I recently spoke to Esther Perel on the show and really sort of opened up about a lot of those things. And I think the thing I'm hearing from you telling that story and when I think about my own relationship, it's that we often have expectations because we're used to things a certain way, so we think that's the norm. But of course, someone else has got their own idea of what is normal, and we've explored this ourselves. And I think as your communication gets better, as you learn, as you said, to have a vocabulary around these things, as you learn to be able to articulate them, suddenly there's understanding on both sides, and a lot of that friction no longer arises because you can communicate. And I guess now your wife will go, oh, you know, Jay likes gifts. You know, even though that's not my thing. For example, it's kind of like, oh, maybe I'll get him a gift, because that's how he experiences love.

My wife organized two surprise parties for me in the last two years, and she got me both times. Like, she organized these two.

Incredible.

And that's what it is. Rongan. Like, that's what it is, is that we're just, you know, in every relationship, you have the ability to set the level of joy you expect and the level of pain you'll accept. But the problem is that we never tell the other person what that expectation and what that acceptance level is, and we never communicate that. And we expect them to be mind readers and expect them to know. And that's really where all of relationships go wrong with our parents, our children, our spouses, our partners, that there is no communication on what we expect and what we're willing to accept. And that creates so many issues that you then think you broke up over something big when actually you broke up over words and definitions. One of the ones I like to talk about is the definition of love. When think about the first time you said I love you to someone. Rangan like, think about the first time you said it to someone. And everyone who's listening and watching, think about the first time you told someone you loved them. What did you mean? Did you mean, I really like you? Did you mean, I hope we can spend the night together? Did you mean, I want to spend the rest of my life with you? I'm guessing that you meant different things at different times. And now think about when someone says I love you back to you. Have you ever asked them what they meant by that? Because chances are you projected your belief onto the word love, even when someone said I love you back. So if you said I love you and you were thinking, I want to spend the rest of my life with you, and that person said I love you, you projected that they were saying they want to spend the rest of their lives with you as well. But actually what they were saying was they just want to spend the night with you. And now all of a sudden you're in this complete misalignment of values and we end up in those scenarios. Because families define words differently, people define words differently, and different words mean different things to different people at different times. And so you really have to understand how that person described even being clean and tidy and organized. Everyone has a different definition like this. You know, my room may seem clean to some people and my room may seem chaotic to some people, because everyone has a different definition of what clean and chaotic is. Let's be real, your best days start the night before. Hatch believes small, intentional rituals at bedtime.

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Yeah, very powerful. And you know, certainly the contentment that my wife and I feel in our relationship has improved dramatically since communication got better. And it was really interesting. One of the most amazing things since getting married has been getting to know my wife's family who are just amazing, incredible. And the more time you spend with them, the more you understand how vid my wife has got her characteristics. You're like, oh, of course that's how you've been brought up. I wasn't brought up like that. I had a completely different upbringing. So my idea of what is normal is completely different from yours. And if we both go through life in our own heads thinking this is normal, well of course there's going to be blow ups and friction because they both are normal, but they're different normals to different people. As you sort of talk about relationship reminded me of a moment in your book where you spoke about your relationship with your now wife when you first started dating her and I think you took her out to. I think you saved up. Well, you can, you can share that actually what happens and I'll tell you the reason why it made me stop and laugh is because it reminded me. Although there were different scenarios. I remember when I first met my now wife, when I went out when I was just dating her for a few months. I remember. So I'd played in bands for a few years and at the time one of my solo eps was being sold in HMV in Manchester and had a couple of shows and then when we first started dating, she came along and then I can't remember when, but a few weeks or a few months into it I said, hey babe, I've got the show tonight, do you want to fancy come along? And no, I'm good, thanks. I was like, oh no, you sure you don't want to come? She's like, yeah, I'm all right actually, there's something on telly I want to watch tonight or something. Something which was, you know, for my ego at that time back in the day. I was like, oh, why does she want to come? You know, does she not like me? You know what, you know, it was really interesting but I think that drew me more towards her because I thought I'd never had that before. Like that was, I think that made me more attracted to her. It's like, oh, she's not bothered about that stuff and actually genuinely do would say now that's one of the best things about her, that kind of stuff. She does not give to who she likes me and loves me for who I am underneath and not for the kind of, you know, not because, you know, I'm on telly or I've, you know, whatever with these books or whatever, you know. She's not bothered about that stuff at all. And it's the best thing ever.

Yeah. And that's such a. You know, it's such a blessing to have that in your life, Ranga, because, you know, you meet people at different times, and people meet the love of their life at different times, and it can get really challenging. You reminded me of an interview that I think I refer to even in the book of Robert Downey Jr. And I think he's at Cambridge University, and they're doing a Q A with him, and they're like, you know, what does it feel like to be Iron man and, you know, be this incredible movie star in the Avengers? And he's like, yeah, you know, when I come home and I open the door back from work, it's not like my fifth kids in my family are like, oh, my God, it's Iron Man. What's. You know, he's just. He's just like. My wife's like, can you. Can you take the trash out? And, you know, and it's almost like that reality check. And, yeah, for my wife, in similar. What you were saying, you know, for us, it was this understanding that I had believed that the romance that I saw in the movies was what romance and love was about. Because again, how many of us, our beliefs are set by movies, media and music? So many of our beliefs and what we expect in a relationship are based on a false show. And if you think about it, movies always end with happily ever after where the wedding just happened. So it's almost like you see nothing after the wedding. And the funny thing is that after the wedding is exactly what life is about. Like, that's where life actually starts. Like this life didn't start when you started dating, but movies end with happily ever after and they don't tell the story. And so we all have this honeymoon, happily ever after version of love. And I had that, too. So my first date with my wife, I thought, oh, you know, she want to go to a fancy restaurant. You know, she'll probably want to dress up. She'll want to do this. Because that's what I thought from nowhere. Like, she'd given me no indication of that. And so again, no checking of expectation, no checking of communication. Just complete me on autopilot. And so I booked. I got this reservation at this fancy restaurant. I'll never forget the name. It's called La Canda Locatelli. And it's like this really posh restaurant in London. It's like David Beckham goes there and that kind of thing. And so I'd saved up to take my wife to this restaurant and she, it was the worst date we've ever been on. And it was our first date and she was just like, you could have walked me down Tesco's, like the food aisle at Tesco's and I would have been happier. She loves, she loves, she loves going shopping for food. So any sort of Tesco's or Whole Foods or Waitrose or whatever that she loves it. And so, and it was so interesting to me to think I was like, well, I put all this effort in. And that's what happens. You start thinking, your ego goes, well, you put all this effort in. She doesn't appreciate it and actually realize, no, it's just, you know, me speaking to her in a language she doesn't understand. And this part's the biggest part about how media and I got to share this story. So, Rangan, do you remember how much, do you remember any guidance on how much you spent on your engagement ring? Because this is really like profound for me. But do you remember anything when you proposed to your wife?

Yeah, you know what, I can't remember an exact amount, but I remember thinking, oh, how much are you meant to? And I thought, really, that much? That seems like I can't remember what happened in the end. But yeah, but I know that's out there, isn't it? There's a rule by society on what you should do.

Yeah. So I, So, so that was the thing. So I remember wanting to propose to my now wife and I remember speaking to a bunch of my guy mates who were proposed or were married and they all said, you spend two months salary on your engagement ring. I was like, that sounds like a lot. I had the same reaction as you. And I was like, okay, that's what you have to spend. So I remember spending two months salary on my engagement ring for my wife. I didn't make a ton at the time and I worked in a corporate job and so I did that. And then when I started sharing more ideas and stuff, I really started looking into that. And this is the craziest thing. I found a De Beers commercial from 1991. And in that commercial, it's a black and white commercial. I don't know why, but it was chosen to be black and white. And in that commercial, a man proposes to a woman with a diamond engagement ring. It's a De Beers commercial. And at the end of it, it says this, catch this. This is what it says. It says the diamond engagement ring. How else could Two months salary, last forever. And I was sitting there going, are you kidding me? That that was literally the tagline in a commercial. And so many men took it seriously that by the time I proposed, that was 1991, I proposed in 2014. And so it's like from 1991 to 2014, it became a rule when actually it was just a tagline in an advert. Just showing you the power of media's ability to implant. And really that's Inception at its best. If you've never seen the movie Inception, check it out. But that is literally Inception at its best. That that idea was planted in our mind in 1991, and in 2014, I'm still operating by that idea and I don't even know where it's come from from. That's the power of an idea. And that's why it's so important that we plant powerful ideas into our mind that are useful to us.

And that's the value and how powerful stories are, and narrative, even stories that we tell ourselves. So that then starts off as maybe the idea if one advertising executive in a company somewhere who's getting paid to do this commercial, does it, and then it becomes a reality for millions of people around the world who are then stressed out trying to think, oh, if I'm going to be a real man, I have to spend two months salary on this ring. And it goes back to everything you're talking about. It's about identity, it's about stories. It's about how can we start creating the stories that are going to start to help us, going to nourish us and feed us, rather than the ones that are going to keep us trapped and in prison. And I think there's two things I think your book really like, when I think about it, big picture, what it offers. I mean, there's so many things. But the two themes I really think about are one, awareness. I think every single chapter people are going to start thinking. And let's just start going to. Because you've shared so many lovely stories as well in it, which I think really brings it to life. People are going to start to see their own life in them. And I think you're going to help bring awareness to people. And of course, without awareness, there can be no change. Awareness is that first step. And often awareness is all you need. I find sometimes. And of course, there are lots of practices you can do to help, but sometimes just being aware means, oh, I can change that now, because I know where that's coming from. But the other thing I think your book offers people is freedom because you, you get true inner peace and mental freedom to live the life that you want to, not the life that other people have set out for you or an advertising exec has sort of implanted as an idea. And then, you know, if we sort of start to go in some of these practical tools. You mentioned some exercises already. You mentioned gratitude. And gratitude has come up on the show before. But what I loved about your take on it was, if I remember the chapter rightly, you said, gratitude is a daily practice. That's the easy part. I want you to be grateful in every aspect of your life. And I love that. And I've been sitting with that idea for the last week or so. What if you could expand on it, Jay?

Yeah, beautiful. I'm really glad you're asking me about gratitude. Before we do that, though, you sparked another thought. Do you mind if I kind of go back? If you're okay with it.

Go where you want to go.

You're sparking so many great thoughts, thoughts in my mind. I can't ignore them. This is such a, you're such a great interview. It's so much fun. Like, I really feel like you've just, we've gone in so many directions that I didn't even plan. So thank you so much. But when you were talking about the stories we tell ourselves, I think that's so important because there's a, there's a great study that talk about in the book by Amy Brisniewski from the Yale University. And what they found is that they tried to find a career that they felt people may find not sharing a positive story around. And they found that hospital cleaners or hospital workers potentially have one of the toughest jobs and rung. And you're a doctor and, you know, I'm sure you've seen people having to do that work. And it's a tough job. And so they asked hospital workers how they define their jobs. And the majority of them defined it as low skilled, defined it as, you know, insignificant, defined it as just a way to pay the bills and that their job wasn't useful or their job wasn't important. And their role was basically described like the personnel manual. But then they asked another set of hospital workers, the same people who did the same jobs, different people who did the same jobs. And they said, how do you feel about your jobs? And these people had completely different views. They felt they were healers, they felt they were caretakers. They felt that they were able to transform the energy of the Actual hospital. They felt that they were carers for the people there. And what they found is that these same people, sorry, different people who did the same job were telling themselves a different story. And therefore they saw their role as integral to the healing of the patient. And because they saw their role as integral to the healing of the patient, they found the work that they did to be extremely meaningful. And that's crazy to think about it, that different people doing the same job could say different things about the same work. They're doing the same exact thing daily, but someone thinks it's meaningless and the other thinks it's so meaningful. And this was a term by Yale that was called job crafting. The ability to assign meaning where you see it, and all of a sudden your life becomes meaningful. So if you're sitting in a job right now that you hate and. Or if you've got a boss that you really don't like, or if you're in a relationship that you don't want to be in, if you can't leave for whatever reason right now because of COVID or lockdown or whatever it is, financial difficulties, if you can't leave and you really want to, One of the things I recommend you do is called job crafting from the Yale School of Management, that you start asking yourself, where can I find meaning in this? What can I learn? What can I adopt? What is this trying to teach me? And that's actually where gratitude can be applied to every place because you start going, there is some value in this. I remember when I wanted to leave my corporate job and I wanted to live my passion and do what I do today. But I'm so grateful. I was at my corporate job because I learned so much there that is so useful to me now. And we find it very easy to be grateful when things are going our way, but we find it very difficult to be grateful when things are not going our way. But what we have to learn to realize, which is a really hard lesson to realize, is that things are always going your way. If you're moving in the right direction, things are not going to always look like they're going your way, and they could still be going your way. We've all seen curses turn into gifts and gifts turn into curses. But the problem is rang, and this is the challenge. We have a projector up here of what we want life to look like, and then we have the reality of what life actually looks like. So there's this big discrepancy. And so sometimes you're actually going in the right direction, but because it doesn't look like your picture and your image of what it should look like. You work less, you become lazier, you become complacent, you try less harder because you're like, this doesn't look like the right direction, but you get to where you want in life, just not in the way you imagined it. If you keep going, if you keep pushing, if you keep learning. And that's what it means to be grateful in all areas of your life. Is trying to, even in the toughest moment, even in a challenging situation, not gratitude like, oh, I'm so thankful to you for causing me the pain. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is saying to yourself, where is there meaning in this? Where is the lesson in this? So I don't repeat this again. If I can be grateful in this challenging situation and I can experience gratitude at all times, then I'm always going to be coming at things from a positive space and positive energy.

Yeah. So powerful. Jay, would you recommend people start off with a particular daily practice as a way of getting good and developing the skill before they can start applying it, let's say, to, you know, aspects of their life that maybe aren't going as well as they want to, where they have to reframe things. I mean, what has been your experience in trying to teach people about gratitude and how they should start that process?

Yeah. So you always develop your muscles in the training center and in the gym. You don't go out and develop your muscles on game day. Right. Like, no one gets thrown out onto the pitch and says, oh, yeah, go and play a World cup final and you'll figure out how strong you are. You'd never do that. You. You train in the gym, you prepare, you get ready, and then you go. You don't go, I want to learn how to run. Maybe I should run in the marathon next year. Right. You don't. That's not how it works. And so Rangan is absolutely right that it starts in small bouts. So I want to get more practical because me and Rangan have spoken about a lot of concepts today when we talk about practicing thankfulness or gratitude. And I talk about four habits in the book. One of them, one of the key daily habits or daily practices is thankfulness. Now, thankfulness isn't just about feeling. Thankfulness isn't just about thinking. It's actually about expressing. So when Rangan messaged me a few weeks back and he told me that he'd been reading my book. He. I sent him an early copy because he was going to interview me on the podcast, and he sent me that message. I was. I was so grateful to him, like, genuinely, because he was expressing gratitude to me. And that's the amazing thing. Instead of just feeling gratitude, let's say Rangan felt it, but he didn't say it to me. If he didn't say it to me, he would have not had the experience, A, of sharing it, B, of receiving my gratitude back to him and our relationship deepening based on that simple message he sent me. And so gratitude becomes more powerful when you express it daily. So every day ask yourself, who's a person that you want to express gratitude to? And go and tell them, secondly, what's a place that you're grateful for and spend more time in that place? And what's a project that you're grateful for in your life? And if you write these down every single day before you go to bed, who's a person I'm grateful for and why? What's a place that I'm grateful for and why? And right now, it may not be a place you can go to. It may be a place that you visited and you're so grateful you got to go there before COVID And the third thing is a project in your life. And so when you express gratitude, make sure that it's specific. So I'll give you an example. Let's say Rangan throws a party with his wife this weekend at their home, and their friends come over. And one of his friends, Rangan, give me two friends names in your life and we'll pick on them for a bit, okay?

I say Jeremy.

Jeremy.

I know he'll be listening. You know what? I'll get Gareth.

Gareth and Jeremy. So let's say Gareth and Jeremy. And again, I'm just gonna add a disclaimer. None of this reflects Gareth and Jeremy in real life. But let's say Gareth and Jamie come to this party that Rangan and his wife throw. And it's just, you know, just a gathering to get people together. The next morning, Rangan wakes up. He doesn't look at his first thing in the morning, his phone. That's not what Rangan does. Rangan looks at his phone about three hours later, after he's exercised, meditated, spent time with his kids. And then he looks at his phone and he sees these two messages from Gareth and Jeremy. Gareth, sorry about this, but here we go. So Gareth and messaged him saying, thanks, mate, it was great. Right? That was Gareth's message. And Jeremy's message was, Rangan, thank you so much. Like, you and your wife just threw an amazing party. And I loved all the games we played. Your kids are adorable. And, oh, by the way, you know, you know that food, how did, how did you both make that? The food was amazing. Thank you so much. Thank you for letting us have this moment together. So those are two messages. A or B, which one do you think causes Rangan more joy? Now, Rangan's a grateful person, so he'll be grateful to both of them, but he's more likely, and honestly, all of us are going to be more grateful to the, to Jeremy in that scenario because he's gone into more depth and been specific about what he actually liked and learned. And because of that, he's now going to attract more love and gratitude back from Rangan as well. So that's why expressing gratitude is actually the key. And if we can express gratitude to people, places and projects, we start to develop more gratitude in our life. And that's something we can do daily. And it can be an email, it can be a voice note, can be a text, it could be a video call, but it can be as simple as just a text message. But specific gratitude is scientifically shown to be better for you and better for the other person.

Yeah, I mean, Jay, thanks so much for sharing that because, you know, gratitude gets spoken about a lot these days. But I think that specificity piece, I think that example beautifully demonstrates just. I can feel it, the difference. You know, you can feel it viscerally as you hear it. It does something different. And I remember so clearly. I think I left you a WhatsApp voice message because I was literally, I was thinking, oh, he's probably asleep now, but he won't have his phone on at night. You know, there's that bit of insecurity at first, and I thought, no, just express the damn gratitude. I think the rongin of a few years ago possibly wouldn't have done it out of insecurity or will this be taken the right way or the wrong way or whatever. But I would say the person I am today, having done a lot of the work and having practiced a lot of these tools, not only as you're sharing does it feel good for you to get it, but it feels nice to share. I'm doing a lot of voice notes these days. I'm finding I'm going to WhatsApp pressing the mic. In fact, someone told me during lockdown that you can actually press it and flip it up, which is My friend Jody. Thanks, Jody. I didn't know you could do that because you can talk without actually holding it.

I didn't know that either. I hold it. Thank you, Jody. Thank you so much.

That's actually Jeremy's wife. So it's all coming. It's bringing it back together for those guys. But, you know, I find it's really some of the kind of person I like talking and sometimes I find it hard to express what I want to on a text message. So I'll just do a WhatsApp voice message. And yeah, I think gratitude is super powerful. One thing I'm going to add. Well, I'll ask you actually, do you do your gratitude practice by yourself or do you also do it with your wife?

So I do my gratitude practice by myself, but then the expression may lead to me expressing it to my wife if she's the person that day that I'm being grateful for. And now I'm probably grateful to my wife every day. And so I express gratitude to her every day. But I really find spending some time by myself to figure out my mind first. It's almost like if you're both trying to solve a problem together, you can help each other, but one person can sometimes take shortcuts because the other person kind of carries the weight. And it's really important to really be clear about who you're grateful for. You can do it with your partner, of course, but make sure one of you are not kind of relying on the other person to come up with all the answers and do all the hard work when it really needs to be a personal feeling. So, you know, yeah, for me it's. For me, I feel gratitude is the easiest gift you can give someone and the easiest gift for someone to receive, especially when it's genuine and specific. And Rangan, I would encourage you not just with me, but with anyone. You know, it was so genuine and specific that, you know, I recommend you continue to do that sharing of gratitude. As you saw and you said it's visceral. It is. It boosts your mood when you're grateful to someone in a specific way and then you feel their love back.

Do you feel or do you think as I do, that many people have got hang ups and insecurities and therefore to do what I did to actually express gratitude to someone, they're fearful about doing it because insecurity is. I think we all face insecurities. Right. And how would you help someone who says, hey, Jay, look, I want to do that. I'd love to tell My work colleague, that she was so helpful to me yesterday and she got me out of this jam and helped me do something. But you know, what will it come across wrong? I don't really know. What will they think? I mean, what would you say to someone like that?

Yeah, I think you are right. I think some of our insecurity comes from. Sometimes our insecurity can come from our ego, which is blocking our gratitude. So the ego says, well, I don't want to recognize that someone else is doing something good because it makes me feel inferior. That's one of the ways that our ego can block us from gratitude. And I believe in some traditions and in some circles I've heard ego being translated to eliminate gratitude out. Right. It's like, eliminate ego. So, you know, you can, you can kind of lose gratitude through ego because you think, oh, if I tell them that they're good, then that means I'm not good, which is not true at all. The other way the insecurity comes in, gratitude is like, oh, well, what if they think I'm just trying to. I'm just trying to, like, get close to them or I'm just trying to say something nice for the sake of it, or I'm just lying or pretending? Like, what if they think I'm just trying to suck up to them? Right. Like, is that the reason? And so sometimes we hold back how we feel. What I'd say to you is, I'd say that expressing gratitude, if genuine, if from the heart and if well explained and thought out, should always be shared, even when you feel uncomfortable. Because when it's shared from that place, you've already got the benefits of feeling grateful. And then if that person does or doesn't react in the way you expect them to, and by the way, there shouldn't be a need for them to react because you're just thanking them for what they've already done. You're not thanking them for what they're about to do. You're thanking them for what they've already done. So now if they respond in an ungrateful way, you haven't lost your gratitude because you're grateful for what they did in the past, not what they did in the future. So don't then go, oh, well, they didn't even deserve me to be grateful because they did for that moment of what they did for you. So share it because it's good for you. Don't worry about how they respond.

Yeah, and I guess also if they do respond in that way or if they do Think that that's their own issue, right?

Yeah, yeah.

That's not your issue. That you've expressed it from your hearts. How they react is kind of out of your control, Right. And that's another key learning, I think on this path to thinking like a monk, I would guess is, you know, you're not in control of other people's thoughts, right?

Not at all. And that's, you know, that's the biggest lesson is that you're not in charge of the results, how people respond or what they think. You never are. So wasting your time trying to change how someone thinks of you is. Can actually be one of the most worthless pursuits in life. But changing how you think about yourself is probably one of the most worthwhile pursuits in life, but the one we spend less time on. We're constantly trying to change how people think about us. And we think if they think highly of us, then we'll feel better about ourselves. But that's not the case. The case is we can change how we feel about ourselves by changing our behavior and being more in aligned with the person we want to be with our values. As Rangan said, going back full circle. So don't get lost in trying to change other people's perceptions of you because that could be a never ending journey and a journey that you never reach the destination of because you never will truly be able to control it.

Yeah. Comes full circle. Back to that coolie quote, right? I mean, it is such a powerful quote because everything we talk about, you can then just back it up straight into that. And again, it brings out the meaning of that quote so much more. But Jay, when you were just talking there about the insecurity that some people may feel when trying to express gratitude, I was struck by something I wrote down from your book and I can't remember which chapter it's in, but you say it's impossible to build one's own happiness on the unhappiness of others.

Yeah. So I'm quoting Daisaku Ikeda, who's a Buddhist philosopher, who says that statements I believe I can't remember which chapter. I think I start the negativity chapter with that quote. So it's Daisaku Ikeda, Buddhist philosopher, and he says exactly that, that you can't build your own happiness on the unhappiness of others. And I think what that truly means is we often believe that we can only be superior if someone else is inferior. So we feel better when we say, oh, you know that person, did you know that couple's getting A divorce. Did you know their marriage only lasted, like, two years? And what you're really saying is, well, we've somehow managed to stay together for eight years. Like, we've done pretty all right. Right. And you're. You're kind of gossiping about them, or another way it goes is like, oh.

Did you hear about him?

He's. He's totally messed it up. Like, he's getting fired next week. And all you're doing is you're making someone feel inferior to make yourself feel superior. That doesn't create happiness. It creates more uncertain ground. Because now you're constantly looking for someone else to feel inferior, for you to feel superior. And guess what? God forbid someone's now outperforming you. You're now feeling inferior and you're feeling all the insecurity of what you felt about someone else. So it's never a stable ground. Right. I believe it's in the Bible. But, you know, you can't. I think it's that you can't build your home on shifting sands, but in the same way, you can't build a stable identity of yourself on the gossip or the mistakes of others. And so you've got to be really careful about not building a ground for yourself. Imagine the ground you're standing on is built on blocks of superiority. Bricks of gossip and mud and cement of criticism that's not going to hold. And so you don't want to create your joy because other people are struggling or suffering. You want to create your joy because you know how to deal with struggle and suffering.

Yeah. So beautifully explained. And I think we often write the quotes down that really mean a lot to us. And I certainly feel, for me, that was something I spent a lot of my adult life really trying to come to terms with and realizing, you know, I used to be so competitive, you know, if I won a game of snooker or table tennis or, you know, it would literally elevate me. And if I lost, man, I would be down in the dumps like it would. And I've really explored this. And, you know, given the time we've got left, I sort of probably can't go down this rabbit hole. But, you know, I know one component is that as a kid, you know, how I did at school, you know, and again, I don't know if this is the same in your household. I know a lot of immigrant families have this sort of mentality. If you, you know, if you got 98%, it's like, well, why was it not 100%?

Yeah, for sure.

You know, you were like, oh, what? You came second in that test. Why? What happened? Who was first? Why didn't you come first?

Yes.

And you know, I actually think, whilst I and my mom will say, because I've spoken to her about this recently, she said, well, I knew you were capable so I wanted you to be the best you could. And okay. And I think she was doing the best she could. I would say for me, the way I interpreted it was that I can only be loved. I can only be feel good about myself when I'm number one. And really, I'd say over the last sort of five years, that's pretty much almost gone for me now. I'm pretty okay with it now. Like, I don't feel. And I think that is, I think it's such an important quote that you've shared because I sort of think now, and we should probably talk about social media a bit because you're pretty much the king of social media in so many ways and I think I'd love to know some of your thoughts on social media. But with respect to that quote, I think one of the negatives and there's no doubt been a lot of positives of social media, you have shared such amazing wisdom in your videos to millions of people around the world, which potentially may not have happened without social media. Right. So it's not about saying it's either good or bad, but I do think for some people it can magnify those insecurities. So if you feel that you can build your happiness on the unhappiness of others, people can get very focused on follow accounts and likes. And I certainly know in the, in the UK medic world, there's a lot of medics feel a pressure to be building up their profiles and have contacted me saying, you know, I'm not sure what to do. And you think, wow, it's causing such discontentment. And it's just a metric that in so many levels, I'm not going to say it's meaningless. Of course it's not meaningless. But if you're trying to do it because how you'll be perceived by others. Going back to what we've been talking about throughout this conversation, what are you posting for? What are you hoping to achieve by posting? Is it in service? Is it to help people or is it to elevate yourself? You know, I don't know, maybe you can untangle that some for us because I'm sure some people listening will be.

Thinking that, yeah, there's very few creators of content on Social media that started out with a follower count in mind. So me included a lot of my peers in this space, a lot of people that I know that are extremely successful on different platforms. None of them started, at least the ones that I know, none of them started to get followers. They all started because they had something to share, whatever that was, whether it was comedy, whether it's wisdom, whether it was a workout plan, a fitness plan, whatever it was like they had something that they did that they were passionate about, they wanted to share. And I can only speak to myself fully, but when I started, I thought I was going to have a full time corporate job and I was going to make videos on the evenings and weekends to share a message. That's genuinely all I believed. And after my first month, I had about a thousand subscribers on YouTube, about four videos I'd made on YouTube at about a thousand people that had subscribed to my channel. And most of my friends were like, great, Jay, that's where it's going to end. Like, congrats, well done. You got a thousand subscribers. You kind of just crept in there in 30 days, like, well done, that's cool. Like, how far is this going to go? And that's really the reality of what it felt like. And the interesting thing is the question was never how do I get more followers. The question was always, how do I make more content that impacts people? Because, and that's the question with everything. It's like, if you make more content that genuinely impacts people, you get more followers. If you build a business that serves more people, you make more money. If you help a lot of people through your talents and gifts, you will be famous and known for it. Like it's, it's a byproduct of doing something properly. And that's why I love the definition that Peter Diamandis gives that we should redefine the word billionaire to be someone who impacts the lives of a billion people. Why is Jeff Bezos the richest man in the world? Because he's created a product that we all say we want and that it solves a problem that we really need. And so if you want to get followers, don't look at the number. Ask yourself, are you really creating the value that's going to help people and they're going to naturally want to follow you and they're going to want to love your work and share it. Because to me, that's the worthwhile pursuit in life. Because when you do that work, that work is humbling. When you do that creativity, that's the part that makes you grateful for the success that you get because you go, wow, like, people actually care about what I have to say. But if you're just obsessed about numbers and metrics without being obsessed by the content, the creation, and the service, then you'll never be satisfied because there'll always be someone better than you. So for me, when I set out to write this book, so many people like, oh, so do you want this book to be a bestseller? And I said, I want this book to be a bestseller. Of course I do. But I'm not going to focus on it being a best seller. I'm going to focus on writing the best book in the world that I can possibly write, given the skills that I have. And that's why when I talk about Dharma in the book, which is helping everyone find their purpose, Dharma is broken down. Dharma means purpose loosely, and has many different meanings, but one of them is nature and purpose, your true nature. And the three aspects that I'll share now for the and there's more depth in the book. The three aspects of Dharma are your passion, your skills, and your compassion. That's what it means when you have your passion plus your skills plus your compassion. That equals purpose. But for most of us, if we're just looking at numbers and metrics and data, I mean, you'll be dissatisfied. That. And I'm saying that as someone who really values numbers, I understand the value of followers, social media, I get the value of all those things, and I'm highly strategic. But I'll be completely honest with you, I'm not focused on the number. I'm focused on making content. And that's the message that if we're focused on really creating value in the world, all of the other stuff will come naturally. You know, you don't have to go out and separately try and get it. And you know, Rangan, you've done a great job of this. You've made content that's very organic to you. You've made content that's very natural to you. And I think that's what people gravitate towards you and your podcast and your books, because it's you being yourself. You're not trying to sound like someone else. You're not trying to be someone else. And if you look at the most successful creators in the world, they're all like that. They've just really shared their raw personality with others.

Yeah, I mean, thanks for sharing that, Jay. And I will just add to that as I have stripped away the layers of conditioning from my childhood and the insecurities and frankly used a lot of the tools that are in your book. But there's a lot of new ones in there for me to be applying, which I'm really grateful that you've written this book. I think it is incredible and I will sit with a lot of these as I already am, but as I have become more me and I post, frankly, I'm like you, like many people, I'm a busy guy. I've got two young kids. I made a decision that spending time with my children, spending undistracted time with my family is more important to me than other things people have heard me say before. I don't tend to, let's say, insta story that much or when I'm at home because my kids are around. And for me, it doesn't fit with my values to model to them that every aspects of my life needs to be documented into a screen. Now, that is absolutely not a criticism of people who do do that. I genuinely isn't. It's not. It's just not the way I choose to do things. But, but really what I was trying to say is that I think what, what you said about your focus on making content that changes people's lives and of course then people are going to share it because you're giving people something of value. And I found, not only particularly with this podcast, which is probably the favorite thing of all the things that I do now, because I get to be myself. I get to talk with amazing people like you. We get to have honest conversations that really, you know, often there's no real agenda that's just about trying to share your insight. My insight just have these sort of conversations and I feel I have become a happier and more content person since I started doing my podcast because it's helped me be myself. It's exhausting trying to be someone else. You know what I mean? It's tiring trying to be someone else. And going back to what you said at the start, if people are trying to spend their lives living someone else's life, it's knackering.

It's so tiring. It's so tiring. I think I'm sure it's been stated before around how it's so hard trying to act like someone else and so much easier. It's less effort being yourself. But that's what you said. Our childhood has made us believe we're not enough and so we think we have to be what's rewarded in society. And actually we're now living at A time where what's being rewarded in society is being yourself and, you know, and that authenticity. And you're right, it's not about whether someone's posting 30 stories a day or not. That's not what it's about. It's about is that authentically the life they want to live. That's the question. The question isn't, do you make videos or have a podcast or have millions of followers? The question is, is that authentic to who you are and what you're really trying to do in the world? Because, by the way, I know people who've impacted the world who have zero followers. Yeah, right. Like I know people who've impacted the world who have no videos or content. That's not the only way to impact the world. That is a way to impact the world. And that's a way that I had to pursue and Rangan's pursued in a different way in his life. And if you look at Rangan's journey and my journey, we're doing it in different ways. There's not. There's no sameness in how it's being done, because everyone has that. So don't limit yourself to believe there's only one way to getting to where you want to go. There are multiple paths, and you probably have to test and experiment and take a few of them to see which one actually comes to fruition. And I took many paths. I tried so many things before I tried social media that social media was the only option I had left. And so for me, social media wasn't even my first choice. Social media was my last choice of how to work. But I was getting no breakthroughs from media companies and media execs and content platform. I got no love from it all. So I had to turn to social media.

Wow. Just so powerful. So incredible, Jay. I mean, Jay, look, I had so many things to talk to you about relationships and about service and about, you know, the four Cs of friendship, you know, which. Which again, is expanding a vocabulary for people to be able to understand their lives but understand their friends better, get less frustrated. But, Jay, this podcast is called Feel Better, Live More. And that's because when we feel better in ourselves, we get more out of our life. Now, you shared some wonderful insights and practical tips for people in the show today. I'd always like to leave people with a few practical things that they can think about introducing into their life immediately to change the quality of their lives, to change the way they feel. You have so many tips. I know it's a Tricky question, but do you have three or four sort of closing tips, words of wisdom for people to really start changing things immediately.

So they call the three S's the sights, the sense, and the sound. So what we see, what we hear, and what we smell has a huge impact on how we feel. And we actually underestimate our senses because we rely so much on our eyes. I'll give you an example. Everyone's been wearing masks recently, right? Like, everyone's been wearing a mask recently. How many of you struggle to understand what people are saying because you can't read their lips anymore? Yeah, right. We're so used to looking at people's lips as they talk that we know what words they're saying. Now that we can't see their lips, we realize we're actually not that great listeners and our ears are almost asleep. So we rely so much on our eyes. So let me explain to you what you can choose, change. Let's talk about sights. What you see, ask yourself right now, what's the first thing you see in the morning? What's the first thing? 80% of people, they see their phone first thing in the morning. And last thing in the night, after they see their partner and before they see them in the morning, 80% of us change it. I want you to see something in the morning that fills you with joy. It could be your favorite quote, it could be your favorite teaching. It could be a picture that your kids drew that you absolutely love. It could be a photo of your family. It could be a work of art that inspires you. I surround myself in my studio with pictures of places I've lived, people that I'm inspired by, stories that I've told. Because it fills my mind with energy. When I walk into this room, if I walked in and saw a blank white wall, of course I'm going to go. This is way more interesting. But my wall is more interesting than this to me, because it's meaningful. And so the first thing you see in the morning, don't make it something reactive. Don't make it a message or an email. Make it something that you've chosen to inspire you. That's the first thing. The second thing is the sense in your life. Why is it that when you walk into a spa or you get a massage, you feel relaxed? It's because they have sandalwood, lavender, and eucalyptus just spraying out of diffusers and candles. And it's an instant way of feeling calm. If you just inhale on your inward breath for a count of four and exhale For a count of four, if you just inhale eucalyptus, lavender, sandalwood, whatever scent you like from a diffuser or a candle, you will feel a natural sense of calm in your life and feel that clarity that you need to drop out of that anxious feeling you may have. And you can have a different scent in your living room, a different scent in your bedroom, a different scent in your kitchen, one that feels right for the energy you want in that room. And the third and final one is sound. So many of us don't realize the power of sound. But whether you're listening to your favorite song or whether you listen to nature sounds, when we were monks, we would rise to nature sounds. And we found that the sound of nature is so at pace with the body and the mind. And when I lived in New York, I'd often feel exhausted mentally and I'd wonder why. I exercise, I meditate, why is it that I feel that way? And I realized because it's of something when I researched called cognitive load. Your brain is making sense of insignificant sounds, of drilling, of construction work, of cars and taxis and horns. And so your brain doesn't have the power to deal with what's actually it's trying to focus on. So ask yourself, what are the sounds in the background of your life? Are they songs that bring you to life? Are they music that calm you down before you go to bed? Use sights, scents and sounds to change the state and energy of any environment in your home. And if you literally walked into every room in your house and you said, what is the sight that inspires me in this room? What is the scent that calms me in this room? And what is the sound that makes me feel at ease in this room? And you, sound design, sight design and scent design each of your rooms with just a candle, a picture and a playlist. You'll transform the way you feel starting today.

Yeah, just brilliant tips, Jay. Really, really great. And man makes me think about my own morning. And even scent. I like that. That is something I hadn't really thought about. Although I often do come into the garden and sort of first thing, but I could come in and really pay attention to what I'm smelling rather than just being in nature. I could also smell something. So I will do that tomorrow morning. You might even get another voice message of gratitude.

I love it.

But Jay, in the spirit of what you said before, of gratitude, I really, I do want to say that what you have done by living your life, by going on your journey is impact the lives of millions of people around the world. And I think you're continuing that path with this wonderful book that I really do hope is a bestseller all around the world because I think it's jam packed full of wisdom and I just want to acknowledge you for that. Say thank you. Thank you for giving up some of your precious time today. We, me, the listeners have loved having you on for your better live more and I'm looking forward to the next time.

Rangan, thank you so much. I want to be grateful to you too because, you know, when I got that message and you've. And I can tell, obviously in this interview, you spent so much time with the book, it means a lot to me. I mean, there's no greater feeling of satisfaction as a creator than when what you create is consumed and used and practiced. And, you know, there's nothing better than that. And so, you know, you've given me a real gift today. And I'm so grateful that you've shared this with your audience and your community. And I can't wait to do lots more together. Man, I'm excited. I genuinely am. Like, I really look forward to it because, yeah, this, this was such a joy and such a treat and this was my first thing of the day. So I'm glad I got to. Glad I got to do this with you. Thank you so much.

Thanks, Jay.

Yeah, thank you.

You're here right now listening to this. There's something beautiful about that because no matter what you've experienced in your life, you've made it to this moment. And that on its own is an accomplishment. The next seven minutes are about acknowledging the person most responsible for, for getting you here. You. I'm Jay Shetty. Welcome to the Daily J. Let's start as usual with three deep breaths to get centered. Breathing in and breathing out. Feeling your body rise and letting it fall. One more and on we go. I've talked before about how much I love sending thank you notes. They're a powerful expression of gratitude, equally impactful for both the giver and the receiver. But in writing our thank you notes, there may be one important person we've been leaving out. Researchers recruited more than 1100 study participants and had them write one of three letters. One group wrote a thank you letter to someone who'd done something for them. Another group wrote a letter describing something positive that had happened to them. And the third group was instructed to address their letter, dear past me and express gratitude for something they had done for themselves. The traditional thank you notes and the letters describing something positive were all great and filled people with happy vibes. But the researchers noticed something interesting about the third set of letters. When people wrote to their past selves, they tended to focus on a difficult experience and thanked themselves for persevering through a tough time. The word brave came up frequently. Lead researcher Matt Baldwin says that thank me letters seem to bring us closer and to a sense of who we really are by underscoring the good qualities we've shown over our lifetime. And they remind us how we've already demonstrated to ourselves that we can overcome challenges and obstacles. Once we recognize that we've done it before, we realize we can do it again. We tend to think of gratitude as an external practice. We direct our appreciation towards others, to our spouse, our dog, our favorite podcaster. We might even give thanks to the sun for shining or to our car for being so reliable. And that's great.

It's wonderful to acknowledge others.

But don't forget yourself because you're the person most deserving of your thanks. We're often quick to be harsh with ourselves and slow to show compassion and kindness. Conscious self gratitude helps with that. I know that life's journey isn't always pretty. Sometimes we encounter challenges that we're convinced are insurmountable. Maybe you're even experiencing a situation like that now. If so, there's no better time to reach out to your past self recall and acknowledge your fortitude, your creativity, or your ability to hang in there and get to that next day, that next hour, even that next minute. Every single one of us is so much more powerful, capable and resilient than we often believe. So every once in a while, stop and thank yourself for all the ways, large or small, that you've showed up for yourself in the past, and continue to do so each day. With that in mind, let's practice a gratitude based body scan. We're going to check in with ourselves part by part, while saying thanks to our body for supporting us throughout the day. And if any piece of this practice doesn't feel right for you or your body, go ahead and modify it to best suit you. First, bring your attention to your eyes, closing them if you'd like, and observing how they feel. Maybe tired, maybe alert. It's okay if you don't observe anything at all. Say a quiet thank you for all your eyes do to help you move through the world. Now shift your attention to your ears, noticing any sounds that may be present. Express gratitude for this moment and all others, moving your awareness to your jaw and consciously letting it relax. Our jaw does a lot every day but how often do we acknowledge it? For the next few moments, I want to give you the space to decide which body parts to scan and thank. Maybe the lungs for breathing, the heart for beating, the hands for working so hard. Totally your call. And now let's open this up. With our time remaining, I want you to think about how you would start your thank me note. Begin with dear past me and express gratitude for something, anything, you've done for yourself. Your homework is to finish your letter today, and I'd encourage you to put it on paper. Remember, you are deserving of gratitude from yourself. I should also say that I'm grateful for you and I look forward to seeing you tomorrow.

Hey, it's Joel and Matt from how to Money. If your New Year's resolution is to finally get your finances in shape, we've got your back prices, they're still high, and the economy is all over the place. But 2026 is the year for you to get intentional and make real progress. That's right, yeah. Each week we break down what's happening with your money, the most important issues to focus on, and the small moves that make a big difference. Kick off the year with confidence. Listen to how to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Dr. Priyanka Walley.

And I'm Hari Kondabolu.

It's a new year, and on the podcast Health Stuff, we're resetting the way we talk about our health, which means being honest about what we know, what.

We don't know, and how much messy.

It can all be. I like to sleep in late and sleep early. Is there a chronotype for that or am I just depressed?

Health Stuff is about learning, laughing, and.

Feeling a little less alone. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts.

Or wherever you get your podcasts.

This is Dr. Jesse Mills, host of the Mailroom podcast. Each January, men promise to get stronger, work harder, and fix what's broken. But what if the real work isn't physical at all? I sat down with psychologist Dr. Steve Poulter to unpack shame, anxiety, and the emotional pain men were never taught how to name. Part of the way through the valley of despair is realizing this has happened and you have to make a choice.

Whether you're going to stay in it or move forward.

Our two part conversation is available now. Listen to the mailroom on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.

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