The Key Strategies Of Behaviour Change - Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #887

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
What's the problem with reliances?

**Rangan Chatterjee** (0:04)
The problem with reliances is that we are overly reliant on too many things in the outside world, which we cannot control. And those reliances, Chris, are tying us down. So as a medical doctor, one of my main interests is how do you help people make changes that actually last, not changes for two or three weeks in January or maybe January, February, March, but actually long-term transformational changes. And I realized that one of the reasons why people cannot or they struggle to make those long-term changes is because they're too reliant on too many things. I'll give you an example, right? So many people feel that they can only feel good and live the life that they want when everything around them goes right. There's no traffic, the emails are okay, the coffee is given to you by your bruiser just the way you like it. Your boss treats you nicely, there's no traffic on the way home from work. If those conditions are met, we can feel calm and satisfied, and we can get on with our life and make the choices that we want to make. But if those conditions are not met, then actually we start to struggle, we don't feel good in who we are. And what I've realized, Chris, over 23 years now, seeing patients, is that usually the behaviours that we are trying to avoid or cut down on are there for a very good reason. And they're usually there to help us neutralise the internal discomfort that we feel. So the reason I think that most people cannot or struggle to make changes that last is because they're not understanding the role that those behaviours play in their life. They're too focused on the behaviour, but I think we need to be focused on the energy behind the behaviour.

**Chris Williamson** (1:54)
How do you dig behind a behaviour, given that it's quite hard to... We're not crystal balls to ourselves. We don't know why we do the things we do all the time.

**Rangan Chatterjee** (2:04)
Yeah, it's not as hard as actually... It's not as hard as we might think, right? Because let's take something super common and something that people are trying to reset their relationship all the time. Let's say alcohol, for example, right? So what I see a lot of in medicine is us trying to give public health advice to people saying, look, too much alcohol, frankly, a little bit of alcohol is probably not helping you that much. And the way we'll try and facilitate change is by giving people more knowledge and more information, right? You know, too much alcohol will damage your liver. It's not good for your weight, it's not good for your sleep architecture, whatever it might be.
And that can be helpful up to a point. But I submit that most people who are trying to cut back on alcohol or cut it out completely and you can substitute alcohol for sugar or online pornography or gambling, whatever you want, basically, it's a behaviour. What a lot of people who are trying to do that, they already know the damage that that is causing for them. Not everyone, but a lot of them do.
What they're not understanding is why do they keep going to that behaviour? So, instead of every January, for example, buying the new book on the alcohol detox or the sugar detox, anyone, Chris, can stop a behaviour for three or four weeks and they think that they're getting somewhere. But they're often not getting somewhere because that behaviour was there for a reason. So, very simply, if you're drinking alcohol to manage the stress in your life, which many people do, then you can white-knuckle it for four weeks and quit. But usually, you'll end up back to where you were unless one or two things has happened. Either the stress in your life has to come down, so you have less of a need, therefore, for the alcohol. Or you need to find an alternative behaviour to alcohol to manage the stress. When I put it like that, it sounds really, really simple and obvious, but I genuinely believe that when we think about behaviour change, too much of it is about more and more external knowledge. But I think what we all need is more internal knowledge. Your first question to me was about reliances. I said about a lot of these everyday reliances that people have which are tying them down. In this new book, what I've done is go through some bigger picture reliances. Chapter 1, I think is one of the most important chapters I've ever written. It's called Trust Yourself. And I talk about this over reliance on experts. So if I could just elaborate, I think it's a really interesting point. You and me, Chris, we both host podcasts. And we talk to a lot of experts and they give their advice. Now, I don't know if you found this, Chris, but what I would find, and I do find on my podcast, is one week I could talk to, let's say, a medical doctor from Harvard Medical School. So people say, you must get your advice from experts, but here's the problem in the modern world. One week, let's say I talk to Chris Palmer from Harvard Medical School, which I have done. Chris is great. And he will show evidence that a ketogenic diet can be incredibly helpful for some people with bipolar and other mental health problems. He'll give you patient case studies and he'll give you published research to support what he's saying. Two months later, I could talk to someone else. Let's say, Professor Felice Jocko from Australia, right? And we can talk about her trial that showed a Mediterranean diet is really good for reversing depression, right? And she'll present case studies and published research. So what I would find often in my Instagram DMs is that my audience would say, Hey, Dr. Chatterjee, I'm a little bit confused. Chris Palmer said this, Felice Jocko said that. They both sound really, really convincing. I don't know which expert to trust. Of course, I believe in 2024 and 2025, that's the wrong question to be asking. It's not which expert should I trust. It's why do I no longer trust myself? I think we have become overly reliant on external experts. I'm not saying ignore external experts, but somewhere over the last few years, we've outsourced our inner expertise to these external experts. So what I would say to people, and I've got 23 years of clinical experience behind me, so this is real life experience with patients, not just published research. Different things work for different people. So I would say to people, listen, why don't you try what Chris Palmer is suggesting, for example, for four weeks. And in those four weeks, I want you to pay attention, pay attention to your energy, your sleep, your relationships, your focus, your concentration, your guts, your bloating, your bowels. Pay attention, right? And then for the next four weeks, try what the other expert is saying and pay attention to those same things. At the end of that eight-week trial, you will actually start to know which of these diets feels right for me. Does that make sense?