![\"Dr](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/5254036_3_articleinline_DrRanganChatterjee-credit_20Rich_20Gilligan.jpg\" "\\"Dr")
Dr Rangan Chatterjee says his two non-negotiable habits are a daily walk and 10 minutes of meditation. Picture: Rich Gilligan.<\/p>\nBy anyone\u2019s standards, Dr Rangan Chatterjee is wildly successful. The empathetic GP\u2019s Feel Better, Live More podcast recently passed 400m listens (which, he says, \u201cblows my mind\u201d); he has written six bestselling books, and in November, he\u2019s bringing his hit live show, Thrive Tour, to Dublin.<\/p>\n
In a decade, he\u2019s gone from being an NHS GP to a household name, first coming to public attention via the prime-time BBC TV show Doctor in the House.\n <\/p>\n
\u201cIt would be very easy to get a big ego with this stuff\u201d, he admits. However, he remains remarkably grounded, with a clear sense of where his priorities lie \u2014 relationships, family, meaningful work, and having time for the things he enjoys.<\/p>\n
Staying rooted in reality is key. \u201cI still live in my hometown. I still live a very simple life. I still care for my mum,\u201d he says of Bandana, who lives five minutes away from him in Manchester. \u201cI can separate what I do and my successes from how I view myself as a person.\u201d<\/p>\n
His parents have been \u201ca huge influence\u201d on his life, and being able to help care for them both in their later years \u2014 his dad, who had lupus, died in 2013 \u2014 has, he says, given his life \u201ca lot of meaning and purpose\u201d.<\/p>\n
Both emigrated from India to Britain, wanting a better life, and for their children \u201cnot to have the struggles they had\u201d, he says. Academic excellence and a professional career were seen as the path to success and security, as shown by his father, a medical doctor. He was pushed hard to achieve both.<\/p>\n
A \u201cstraight-A student\u201d, Chatterjee attended a prestigious medical school, gained an immunology degree on top of his medical degree, and established a fulfilling career as a GP, all of which he says made him \u201cvery successful by society\u2019s standard metrics of success\u201d, but didn\u2019t bring him happiness.<\/p>\n
He bought into the belief that his worth stemmed from his achievements, and it took years before he understood otherwise.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve realised that external achievement doesn\u2019t make people happy,\u201d Chatterjee tells me over a video call from his base in Britain. \u201cWe think it does. It\u2019s the message we get as children, but it\u2019s not what has made me happy. I realised \u2014 and this is some of the stuff I\u2019ll be talking about in Dublin next month \u2014 that happiness is an inside job, and your worth and who you are is much more than your external achievements.\u201d<\/p>\n
Blueprint for thriving<\/p>\n
His Thrive Tour promises to help attendees design a \u201cblueprint for thriving\u201d, so that \u201cthey\u2019re going to go home with a deep understanding of themselves and, importantly, a plan for how they\u2019re going to start changing things\u201d, says the 49-year-old. \u201cI\u2019m trying to share these tools with people to [show], \u2018there is often another way\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
He views happiness as having three key ingredients: \u201cAlignment, contentment and control\u201d.<\/p>\n
Alignment is about ensuring \u201cyour inner values and external actions\u201d match. Contentment comes from regularly doing things that bring peace. While control isn\u2019t about trying to control \u201cexternalities\u201d, but rather our response to them.<\/p>\n
Dr Rangan Chatterjee says his two non-negotiable habits are a daily walk and 10 minutes of meditation. Picture: Rich Gilligan.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost events in life are neutral,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s the perspective we choose to put on them that determines their outcome on us.\u201d<\/p>\n
To help bring what matters in your life into sharper focus, Chatterjee recommends a \u201cwrite your own happy ending\u201d exercise. Imagine you\u2019re on your deathbed, then \u201clook back on your life and ask yourself, what are three things you will want to have done or spent time on?\u201d<\/p>\n
For him, it\u2019s spending quality time with his wife and their two children, now teenagers, making a meaningful impact on others, and having time to pursue his passions.<\/p>\n
The trick, then, he explains, is to identify three weekly habits that will help make those priorities a reality. For Chatterjee, those are five meals a week with his family where he\u2019s fully present; helping others\u2019 wellbeing through his podcast, and finding time to play guitar or go for a walk in nature.<\/p>\n
His happiness habits have changed his life, and packed schedule notwithstanding, he almost always fits them in, because he wants to nurture the \u201cthings that are truly important\u201d.<\/p>\n
He also has two \u201ckeystone habits\u201d: 10 minutes of meditation when he wakes, and a daily walk. \u201cWhen I do them, every aspect of my life is much better,\u201d he says of what are \u201cas close as you can get to my two non-negotiables these days\u201d.<\/p>\n
Not just about pills<\/p>\n
His approach to medicine has always been different, relating to the case of a 19-year-old who came to his surgery on his first day as a GP. She was \u201creally struggling with her moods,\u201d he recalls, \u201cand if I\u2019d followed the protocol, I would\u2019ve put her on an antidepressant. But it just felt wrong to me. I thought, \u2018Hold on a minute. I need to understand what\u2019s going on in this lady\u2019s life. Maybe the way she feels is an appropriate response to various things in her life?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
A chat revealed that various difficult things, including a break-up, were an issue.
Chatterjee gave her the option of medication, but also suggested lifestyle alternatives of exercise, diet, and journalling. \u201cWithin two months she was completely better,\u201d he says. \u201cShe said, \u2018Actually, doctor, I feel like a completely different person\u2019.<\/p>\n
\n I\u2019ve never liked just using pills to suppress symptoms, I\u2019ve always wanted to understand \u2018why is this person unwell?\u2019 And, can I learn something about their life and teach them something to help improve things?\n <\/p>\n
He is not anti-medication. \u201cI am just anti us using medication for absolutely everything, without helping patients understand there are other options.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want to force my view on a patient, but I\u2019ve found that if you give patients an option and say, \u2018Hey, I could put you on a pill here, but did you know there are other ways we can approach this as well? What would you like to do?\u2019, 99% of the time, they will say, \u2018I\u2019d like to try something else first, if possible\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the choice that\u2019s key.<\/p>\n
His holistic approach to medicine has childhood roots. \u201cMaybe one of the reasons I have this holistic view of health, which is not what we\u2019re taught at medical school, is in part because of the way I was brought up,\u201d he says. As a child, if he had a sore throat or sniffles, his mother would make him a drink with the Ayurvedic herb turmeric, the anti-inflammatory properties of which have now been confirmed by modern science.<\/p>\n
It was Doctor in the House \u2014 which Chatterjee has described as the first prime-time programme to demonstrate how type-2 diabetes could be reversed through lifestyle changes \u2014 that showed him how a media platform could amplify his \u2018lifestyle first\u2019 message, potentially reaching many more people than he ever could as a GP. So, he made the switch. \u201cAnd I miss it,\u201d he says of his practice. \u201cWill I go back one day? Maybe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Right now, he\u2019s happy helping us thrive. \u201cI want to empower people to trust themselves a little bit more and be less dependent on experts like me. I think we can each be the best experts for ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By anyone\u2019s standards, Dr Rangan Chatterjee is wildly successful. The empathetic GP\u2019s Feel Better, Live More podcast recently…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":649282,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[26054,38459,61,60,80],"class_list":["post-649281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-health-life","tag-health-mind","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/649282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}