Dance, talk to strangers and take a daily holiday – Dr Rangan shares the day-to-day habits he’ll be relying on in 2026
When January rolls around, no one hopes the upcoming year is high on stress and low on happiness. We envision the new year as one where we’re finally on top of things and stress glides over us like water off a duck’s back.
Dr Rangan Chatterjee is a physician, podcaster (host of Europe’s number one health Podcast Feel Better, Live More) and author of seven books including the recently reissued Happy Mind, Happy Life. He can attest that a life low on stress is indeed possible, saying “at 48 years old I can tell you I’ve never felt this happy or content”.
But there is no magic wand you can wave to remove the stress, or a secret trick that doctors have been hiding. “I honestly believe that humanity has known the principles of what it means to live a good life for thousands and thousands of years – there’s very little ‘new’ out there,” Chatterjee explains. “We just need constant reminders from different people.”
Here he shares six, five-minute ways to lower your stress and improve happiness. With regular practice, he promises that your life, and your perspective on it, can transform.
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Choose the story that makes you happy – not the one that holds you hostage
Our happiness comes not from what’s happening in the world, but the approach we take to it.
The thing that has changed my life the most over the last five to 10 years is the conversation I had about four years ago with Dr Edith Eger on my podcast. At the time she was 93 years old.
She had been in Auschwitz concentration camp when she was 16. That conversation changed me, because what I learned is that in any situation, you can change your mindset. If she can do that when Hitler was killing people around her, I can probably do that in my fairly decent life.
So I did an exercise for about three months where every evening, once my kids had gone to bed, I would ask myself what point during that day I had reacted [poorly] to something completely outside of my control. Once I identified it I would do something I call “choosing a happiness story”, and for me that means making the other person [in the situation] a hero. What I often say to myself is “if I was that person with their childhood and history and pressures I don’t know anything about, I’d almost certainly be acting in the same way”.
That doesn’t mean you like the scenario, but instead of getting emotionally triggered you just choose the story that makes you happy, not the one that holds you hostage. Maybe [the person who upset you] was late because they have a sick daughter; maybe they got lost; maybe their train was delayed – whatever it is, them being late is no reflection on you.
For it to be life-changing, it only takes a couple of minutes a day but it has to be a practice. I found after a few months of doing this I was able to do it in real time and now, hand on heart, I’m pretty relaxed. It happens occasionally, especially if I’m overworked and underslept, but mostly very little stresses me now.
Take a (tiny) daily holiday
When people hear about holidays, they usually think about getting on a plane to somewhere sunny and being on a beach. And of course we love being away from here, it’s amazing, but that’s not the only thing we like about being on holiday. It also gives us perspective on life.
But you don’t need to wait for your annual break, or even hop on a plane to take a daily holiday.
You can take a daily holiday from your life anytime you want. That could be a 15-minute walk, 10 minutes of meditation, five minutes of journaling, 10 minutes of yoga. Because what these practices do really well is take you out of your life so you can reflect back on it.
One of the reasons we’re so stressed these days is because we’re just constantly in our lives. We’ve got that damn phone with us in bed, we’re on our emails even in the evening and we haven’t stepped out to reflect on everything. This means that everything becomes a bigger issue. But if you step outside for a few minutes and engage in a kind of nothing – you are better able to understand everything.
Set up a phone-charging station – outside the bedroom
The thing I want people to know is that if you struggle to not look at your phone or find yourself constantly on it, it’s not because you’re weak or that you lack willpower. It’s because these phones have been engineered by the best psychologists and experts in human behaviour on the planet to make them that way.
You are fighting a losing battle if you think you’re going to be able to resist looking at that phone if it’s in your vicinity. So what I’ve learned over the years is that I need to have some intentional time each day when my phone is not with me. No phone is ever allowed at the table for breakfast, lunch or dinner; I take a walk without my phone every day (it’s like a bloody holiday!); and my wife and I charge our phones in the kitchen overnight.
I am no different to anyone else. I may have written six books on this stuff, but if that phone comes into the bedroom I will struggle not to look at it. So I’ve learned it’s not about using more willpower – it’s about charging in a different room.
I know people who need their phones nearby because they care for someone elderly, or use it for an alarm. To that I recommend 1) getting a £5 alarm online 2) keeping a landline (only six people in the world know my landline number, all close family), or if they won’t work 3) put your phone in the corner of your bedroom so you can’t easily reach it.
Unfollow negative sites on social media
We know from research that people who have a strong sense of control are happier, they’re healthier, they have better relationships and they earn more money.
This is relevant because the news today often makes you feel powerless and out of control. I grew up watching the news but I realised that on an evolutionary level we have not evolved to be able to see all the possible negative things going on in the world. Evolutionarily all we’d ever know about was what was going on around us in our tribes – we wouldn’t know about a war in a country 2,000 miles away, right? The human brain is not equipped for that.
If you don’t need to keep up with the news for your job, you shouldn’t start your day with a big dose of negativity. I’ve found over the years that many of our thoughts and feelings are downstream from the content we consume. So if you can protect the first and last part of your day, even 10 or 20 minutes without negativity, that can be really powerful.
In the modern, digital world there is a constant fight for your attention. And the best way for people to get that attention is with negativity. For me personally, my feeling is that if a story is big enough, I will see it. This is why I haven’t sat down to watch the news for well over five years – I don’t need the additional negativity.
Try to talk to three strangers every day
There’s a system in your brain that scientists call the sociometer and it’s always scanning the world around you to look for threats. It’s basically asking the question constantly “is my external world safe or not?”
We know from lots of research that when you say thank you to the barista, or you have a brief chat with a delivery driver, these positive interactions send a message to your sociometer. It tells you that your external world is safe and that gives you a greater sense of control in your life.
The digital world has made us more isolated than ever before. Imagine getting a coffee in London 15, 20 years ago you’d be daydreaming, looking around, maybe even seeing someone you know. But now your best mate could literally walk next to you and you wouldn’t know because you’re scrolling on Instagram.
I do this as well, I’m not judging! But the digital world has stolen all these little micro moments of social interaction that we would have otherwise had. It makes us lonely, it makes us depressed, it makes us anxious and it means we’re not happy. So try to talk to three strangers a day, if you can. It could be as simple as saying thank you to the barista or bus driver.
Dance to tunes from your youth
We know from research that regularly doing something you love makes you resistant to stress. So when we talk about reducing stress, we often think about deprivation and restriction but five minutes of joy is probably the best prescription you’ll ever get from your doctor.
I literally have been giving this prescription to my patients for years: for the next seven days I want you to spend five minutes a day doing something you love and you tell me how you feel after a week. The amount of people who told me that practice transformed their life is incredible. It helps you feel calmer, makes you less stressed and makes you significantly happier.
Now what could you do in those five minutes? Anything. Put on a favourite tune and dance around your kitchen. Go onto YouTube and watch your favourite comedian for five minutes. Or engage in a hobby that induces flow state if you can – mine is snooker.
You can even inject that energy into activities that have seemed like chores. One of my favourite things to do at the weekends is get the kitchen to myself, put on some banging 90s rock, clean up the kitchen and cook dinner. So much of our stress is self-created by the way we live our lives. I could go ‘oh my god I’ve got to cook today, I don’t know what to make, let’s get a takeaway’. But when I inject some joy into it, it’s a totally different experience. And it’s really good for us.