Dr. Chatterjee: Make Lasting Change
Is community the cure?
Dear Soul Thrivers,
As we step into a new year, many of us feel the pull to make resolutions—to set intentions for growth, healing, and transformation. This week on the Soul Boom podcast, Rainn Wilson sits down with the wise and compassionate Dr. Rangan Chatterjee—a physician, best-selling author, and one of the most insightful voices on what it means to truly thrive. Their conversation couldn’t be more timely, beginning with Dr. Chatterjee’s inspiring mission: to make holistic wellness accessible to all. His message serves as a powerful reminder of our own capacity to heal, flourish, and create change that truly lasts.
As Dr. Chatterjee points out, modern life often drives us toward burnout—not just as exhaustion, but as a profound disconnection, a creeping numbness that makes us feel like we’re observing our own lives from a distance. Burnout doesn’t just drain our energy; it steals our creativity, our joy, and even our ability to connect with others. It shows up in unexpected ways: irritability over the smallest of requests, stalled creativity when we need it most, or once-simple pleasures feeling distant and unreachable. Burnout, he tells us, is as much about what we cling to as what we’ve let slip away.
At the heart of his new book, Make Change That Lasts, is the practice of “Minimal Reliance.” It’s about identifying and letting go of the invisible dependencies that tether us—our need to be liked, our fear of discomfort, or our endless striving for perfection. These hidden attachments quietly siphon our energy and obscure our power. Dr. Chatterjee offers a path to reclaiming our strength and clarity, built on resilience and radical self-awareness.
And yet, thriving isn’t something we do alone. While shedding what no longer serves us is vital, we’re not meant to navigate life in isolation. Our social circles—our communities, friends, families, and partners—are the lifelines that sustain us. In today’s excerpt, Dr. Chatterjee reflects on the profound beauty of community. Drawing on his experience at the London Marathon, he paints a vivid picture of strangers coming together to cheer one another on—a powerful reminder of what’s possible when we lift each other up and choose connection over division.
As we begin 2025, we invite you to reflect on the changes you wish to make—not as resolutions to achieve, but as acts of love for yourself and the world around you. If you’ve been feeling stuck or overwhelmed, this conversation and excerpt may offer the inspiration you need to move forward, supported by your community and your own untapped strength.
Happy New Year!
The Soul Boom Team
The Power of Community
From Make Change That Lasts: 9 Simple Ways to Break Free from the Habits That Hold You Back
by Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
RELIANCE ON COMMUNITY
One of the greatest lessons I’ve ever learned about the power of community was when I ran the London Marathon in 2021. The honest truth is, I shouldn’t have taken part in the event that year. I was injured and in a huge amount of pain, to the extent that, between miles ten and twenty-six, I could barely lift my right leg. I had to literally drag myself through the final half of the race. I didn’t burst through the finish line covered in smiles and glory but with a grimace and a feeling of “thank God that’s over.” As a physical experience, it was hellish. But, in another way, the experience was truly wonderful. What I witnessed as I hobbled through the streets of London was the most incredible example of community reliance.
When we spend time online, or watching the news, we’re continually given a very powerful signal that the world is hopelessly divided by politics, race, gender and class. Everyone hates each other and the dream of us all coming together as one human family is almost a kind of childish joke. But that is not what I saw for those six hours in October 2021. What I saw was thousands of strangers supporting strangers. In some of the poorest areas that the route travels through, I witnessed people who had set up tables laden with fruit, sweets and homemade cakes and muffins that they were passing to runners, people they didn’t know and would never meet again. Some of the people behind those tables would very likely have had opposing political views to some of the runners and had very different backgrounds and life experiences. It didn’t matter. The Marathon showed me how able we are to rise above our petty divisions. Of course, I realize that humans often fall out about things they find important. But our conflicts don’t define us. What makes us who we are is our capacity for community.
And I really felt it that day. From the bottom of my heart, I know I would never have gotten over the finish line if it hadn’t been for those strangers lining the streets and cheering me on. They gave me a gift. And I’m pretty sure the runners gave them a gift in return. The joy on their faces as they called shouts of encouragement and handed out drinks and delicious cakes said it all. Despite my physical pain, I had an awesome experience. I truly witnessed the beauty of humans when we are at our best.
COLLECTIVE EFFERVESCENCE
Readers of my previous book, Happy Mind, Happy Life, will already know how beneficial I believe it can be for us to talk to strangers. The nods of hello at passersby in the park and the snatches of small talk shared with people behind counters in shops and cafes can change the tone of our day. Scientific researchers argue that this kind of social connection is so important that it amounts to a kind of social vitamin, or “vitamin S,” that we should take daily. It helps us thrive because it’s a regular signal that tells our brains that we are members of a supportive tribe: that the strangers we share our lives with are not to be feared; instead they are good people that we can rely on when in need.
But it’s not only in streets, parks, cafes and shops that we have the chance to take vitamin S. We can also have powerful experiences of communal joy, which researchers sometimes call “Collective Effervescence,” when we go to concerts, films, plays, clubs or even parties. Collective effervescence is a primal tribal phenomenon that seems to trigger something deep in our humanity. Whenever I think about it, I’m reminded of the famous Oasis concert at Knebworth in 1996 (a staggering 2 percent of the entire UK population tried to get tickets for the gig). When the event took place, the police reported hardly any problems with the crowd. Those who were lucky enough to go and sing along to “Champagne Supernova” with 125,000 other people, would have had an experience of collective effervescence so intense they would probably never forget it.
But you don’t have to attend once-in-a-lifetime concerts to experience the joy of community. You could attend yoga classes, join a choir or go to your local comedy club. In this post-pandemic era, making the extra effort to physically be with other people has never been more important. Yes, it’s convenient and easy to talk to people via Zoom, or watch videos of events on the YouTube app on our phones. But when we deprive ourselves of the positive signals that come with true human presence, we make it impossible for ourselves to thrive. One telling scientific study showed that people laugh thirty times as often when they’re with other people compared to when they’re alone. This tells me how crucial it is that we have regular experiences of ourselves as successful members of the great human family. And we can only do that by getting up off the sofa and out of our front doors.
NO MAN IS AN ISLAND
I know from the patients I have seen at my practice that social isolation is a problem that hits middle-aged men especially hard. I suspect this is part of the reason that middle-aged men are more likely to commit suicide than any other group. In earlier generations men would often have socialized in local pubs. A negative consequence of the otherwise positive decline in alcohol use is that we now have far fewer places where men can just hang out and chat and feel connected to a friendship group.
As I know from my own experience, middle age is often a time when our lives become completely filled with work and family responsibilities. We can easily lose touch with childhood mates and, especially in the working-from-home era, struggle to make true friends of the people we work with. For whatever reason, women seem to be able to make social connections far more easily than men. In my local park, I’ve long noticed how common it is to see women strolling in pairs and chatting happily, while men often walk alone.
Psychologists characterize male friendships as “shoulder-to-shoulder” and female friendships as “face-to-face.” In other words, men tend to bond by doing active things together, while women more typically bond by sharing their inner thoughts and feelings. This profound understanding has led to an international “Men’s Shed” movement. Started in Australia, it seeks to create new places where men can meet and bond while learning new things together, whether it’s lawnmower repairs or furniture restoration. I love the idea of this, and strongly encourage my male readers to try to take the maintenance of their friendship circles as seriously as they do their work. And if your partner is a man who has a broken friendship circle, I’d urge you to do whatever you can to encourage them to get shoulder-to-shoulder with other men.
But whatever your gender, it’s important for all of us that we regularly spend time laughing and sharing who we are with a circle of people that we trust, care for and have a shared history with. The reliance on friendship is a reliance on people who accept us warts and all, who will be there for us when we need them, and who will remind us of our value when we show up for them.
RELIANCE ON FAMILY
A few years ago, my wife’s mother came to stay with us for five weeks. I know that some people would be concerned about how this might go but I was actively looking forward to it and feeling relaxed. The experience was fantastic and eye-opening. Having just one extra adult around, helping out with cooking, cleaning and the kids, was a revelation. The entire dynamic in the household changed. The kids seemed happier and Vidh and I became closer as well. We seemed to have more time to chat with each other, were able to go out for walks together and our marriage became revitalized almost overnight.
Those weeks made me think about how unnatural the nuclear family is. The modern world has brought us many good things, but often at the cost of our emotional health…our money- and status-driven culture drives up levels of perfectionism and fools us into thinking that busyness equals success. But the prevalence of the nuclear family is yet another shift that we have not evolved to deal with. In ancient human tribes, grandparents were always on hand to help with parenting – as were uncles, aunts and friendly neighbors. My short time living with my mother-in-law gave our family time for things that weren’t about the basic daily necessities of eating, getting ready for school, homework, tidying and everything else that fills our schedules. It wasn’t only each other that Vidh and I had more time for, we were also more available for our two children. If Vidh’s mum was cooking one evening, it meant we could play together with our kids, or kick a ball around in the backyard. These simple moments of pleasure and play were wonderful to experience. But they were also bittersweet. I got a sense of what life could be like if, collectively, we could just carve out a bit more time in our lives for our families.
The social circle of family is one that depends, more than any other, on the giving and receiving of reliance. Our children absolutely rely on us to be there for them and give them what they need, while we desperately want them to grow up as we wish them to and learn to thrive. Just as with the social circles of community and friends, these reliances are gifts that we both give and receive. The danger with family is that we forget to make space for activities that aren’t simply about the completion of responsibilities and chores.
I don’t believe a family can truly thrive if its members rarely laugh and play together. I was given a powerful lesson in this only recently. Over the past few years, my relationship with my brother has become dominated by responsibility, as we negotiate the care of my mother. He would often come to my house to talk about the situation, or organize something for the next day; on occasion, the mood between us would become serious and somewhat tense. Noticing this, I started to suggest we play a couple of games of snooker when he arrived. Just ten minutes of play would transform the tone of the conversations we would then sit down to have. It sent us both a signal that reminded us that we are brothers, that we love each other, and that even though the situation isn’t great, there is still a lot more to our relationship than our mum’s care.
RELIANCE ON OUR PARTNER
If we are lucky enough (and have consciously made the choice!) to have a partner, this will likely be our most important relationship. Committed couples willingly fuse their lives together. Mutual reliance is the very definition of what long-term monogamy is. It’s the gift we give each other every day. But our relationship with our partner is vulnerable to a huge amount of wear and tear. If there is a problem in any of our other social circles – our community, friends or wider family – we all too often take it out on the person closest to us. This is one of the reasons achieving minimal reliance is so important. The more self-reliant and immune to stress, strain and temptation we become, the more we will be able to give to our life partner.
We will also make space for the reliances that brought us together in the first place. When you met your partner, they probably made you feel good about yourself physically, made you laugh and made you feel special, wanted and heard. These are such hugely valuable reliances, but they can be fragile, especially when we hit middle age. A relationship that thrives is one that nurtures these tender reliances and places a high value on keeping them strong.
I was recently inspired when I read about Marc Randolph, the co-founder of Netflix, who always makes a point of making Tuesday night date-nights with his wife. “I resolved a long time ago to not be one of those entrepreneurs on their seventh start-up and their seventh wife,” he wrote. Even when he was working flat out at the growing company, he explained, “rain or shine, I left at exactly 5 p.m. and spent the evening with my best friend. We would go to a movie, have dinner, or just go window-shopping downtown together. If you had something to say to me on Tuesday afternoon at 4:55, you had better say it on the way to the parking lot. If there was a crisis, we are going to wrap it up by 5:00.”
…There are so many ways in which pursuing a philosophy of minimal reliance can strengthen your closest relationship. But the gift of reliance is also critical to it. In making his Tuesday date-nights a non-negotiable, Marc Randolph was ensuring that he and his wife continued to rely on the things that are so easy to forget in a long-term relationship. He was creating the conditions for his most important relationship to thrive.
THE GIFT OF OTHER PEOPLE
Some of the worst places in the world are prisons. These are buildings specifically designed for the punishment of human beings. They are as close as we get to hell on earth. And what are the worst places inside any prison? The segregation units. Prisoners that break the rules are thrown into solitary confinement, which has been shown to increase their psychological distress, shorten their lives and, sometimes, cause a permanent change to their brains and personalities. This is the closest we have, in the West, to a legal form of torture. The worst thing that the state is allowed to do to a citizen is to separate them from other humans.
This is the danger of pursuing zero reliance. We cut ourselves off from the great human family and accidentally build a prison of isolation for ourselves to exist in. But going too far the other way is also dangerous. Maximal reliance means we demand too much of our social circles. We become needy, weak and exhausting. We wear them out. The sweet spot is minimal reliance. We should strive to become strong enough that we can give more than we take. But we should never forget to be human enough to enjoy what others give us…
It’s critically important that we don’t take the pursuit of Minimal Reliance too far. Humans are a social species, and a certain amount of reliance is not only advisable – it is essential. A huge amount of research shows that social connection is critical for good health. Our goal should be to always give to others more than we expect in return.
All humans have potential access to four social circles – community, friends, family and partner. From time to time, we may end up going through periods of discomfort in each of these four circles, but we should always pursue a life in which each of them is complete. If any of them are incomplete, either through choice or life circumstance, we can compensate by strengthening our bonds in the others.
Other people are a gift, and we should be able to rely on them when necessary. When we achieve Minimal Reliance, and give more than we take, we will become a wonderful gift to the people in our lives.
Excerpted from Make Change That Lasts: 9 Simple Ways to Break Free from the Habits That Hold You Back. Dr. Rangan Chatterjee is a renowned physician, best-selling author, and leading voice in holistic health and wellness. With over two decades of experience as a doctor, Dr. Chatterjee has helped countless individuals transform their lives by addressing the root causes of physical, mental, and emotional struggles. His books, including The Stress Solution and Feel Better in 5, have become international bestsellers, offering practical, accessible tools to help readers thrive in a demanding world. Through his podcast Feel Better, Live More and his latest book Making Change That Lasts, Dr. Chatterjee empowers people to break free from burnout, rediscover balance, and create lives of lasting joy and fulfillment.
Learnt a lot from this interview, as I have from others, each interview offering different insights and information. Love Soul Boom. Thanks, Rainn.