"We Learn It Too Late" - 5 Regrets Trapping People From A Life Of Purpose & Meaning | Gabor Maté

Gabor, you turned 80 Yeah. a few months ago. Two months ago, yeah. How is that for you? Um Well, you know, we had a really nice party um and my children came and they wrote us some songs and they performed them and uh close friends were there. It was a very warm We had wonderful Palestinian food uh catered and uh it was a really good time and it felt it felt like I were arrived somewhere, you know, and uh you nobody ever imagines being 80. I mean, do you imagine ever being 80? Yeah. It's funny

as you you ask that question. No, you think about lots of things in life. I do imagine sometimes what it might be like when my wife and I are old And what we might do together, but no, I can't I can't say I've ever imagined actually being 80 years old. Yeah. And at some point it would have struck me as such an impossibly uh geriatric number, you know? At this point it's just a number, you know, and it's it's almost meaningless. Except it's not completely meaningless because I know that the time is one always knows

that the time is limited. Intellectually we Understand is that nobody lives forever and we never know when the reaper is going to come knocking on your door, but at the same time once you get to be 80 you realize that whenever it's going to happen, it's going to happen within a fairly short period of time. And when I think of when I retired from active medical practice, it was um 13 years ago now. Well, will I still be alive 13 years From now? And it seems like such a short period of time. So, when you

think about it, it's quite um dramatic. But on the other hand, from a moment to moment and day-to-day it just doesn't make any difference. Yeah. There's something about the number 80 Yeah. I think. And of course, we know it's just another day and it's just a a number, But does something change when you wake up and your family and your friends celebrate, "Hey, Gabor, you're now 80 years old." Yeah. Does it in some way change the way you see yourself or or I guess reflect differently on who you are and where you are in your

life? On most days I can say this and not on every day for sure, But there's a kind of ease that's entered my life. Even with all that's going on in the world, I'm just sort of more I don't struggle with the way things are so much. I mean, I like them or not like them. I may react or not respond or but there's not a struggle against just the beingness of things. Mhm. Um I I'm certainly noticing that. Yeah. And and uh people I I had a visitor a week ago who I hadn't seen

for a few years and she says, "You've changed." And I said, "Oh, yeah." She says, "You've become softer, you know?" And um if that's true, it's it's good. It's a sign of kind of loosening inside. You used to work in palliative care. Yeah. And I think you're familiar with the book by Bronnie Ware, the palliative care nurse, the Five Regrets of the Dying. Yeah. What I thought would be interesting today for our fourth conversation on my podcast together Yeah. is to maybe go through each of those five regrets because I I just I'd love to

know from your perspective what each of these regrets says Yeah. about where we are, who we are, Yeah. what things were important to us. Yeah. And so, the first of those five regrets is, "I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me." Yeah. And so, let's keep in mind that like when I used to work in palliative care, which I did for 7 years, and this nurse who wrote the book she's Australian and she wrote the book about 12 years ago now. Mhm. They weren't

talking about people dying at old age. They were mostly it's about people dying before their time. Mhm. And so, the regrets that they had um as their terminal illness, usually malignancy or perhaps chronic autoimmune disease um brought them to the end of their physical existence, what did they regret? And the top one was, "I wish I had the courage to live My own life rather than the one that people expected of me." I would reframe that because there's a deep truth in it and as you know and perhaps we've talked about from my point of

view, very often the people that do develop chronic illness are people that have suppressed their own true selves for the sake of being accepted to others and that self-suppression has deep physiological consequences on the immune system, on The nervous system, on the heart and so on. So, that that self-suppression is also physiological self-annihilation in some ways. But when she talks about courage, that's a self-judgment. They're saying to themselves, "I wish I had the courage." As if it was a question of cowardice. It isn't. It's a question of programming. Like you and I are both parents,

we know This. No infant is born suppressing themselves. No infant enters the first day on this earth trying to please anybody. Mhm. They're just being purely themselves. Yeah. Expressing their joy when it's there, expressing their upset, their distress when that's dominant, but they're purely themselves. So, that what she calls courage or what these people call courage of being myself is actually A trauma imprint that for some reason they learned early in life that to be themselves is to court rejection by their environment. So, it's not a lack of courage. You can't talk about a 1-year-old

lacking courage or a 2-year-old. It's simply an adaptation. Now, lo- later on they say courage, but really that's a that courage is the lack of it is a shorthand for something happened to me That I gave up my true self for the sake of being accepted. And that cost me uh first of all, it cost them in terms of physical illness, but also cost them in terms of self-respect and and dignity. It's a major one. Yeah. Are you living a life at the moment that's true to yourself? I am now. Um Uh I I sense

that I am I believe that I am um that doesn't mean every second I do, you know, but on the whole I do and it feels really good. And I know you and I had dinner last night and and and you were telling me that you're finding yourself far more self-expressed and and and comfortable with who you are Than you used to. So, that's the good news, people, is that this is a process that can continue for a lifetime. Yeah. But yeah, um I I really see that people who suppress themselves really suffer. Yeah. So,

that first regret, "I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself." Um I'm really glad you picked out the Word courage because that word also stands out to me. Yeah. It's very interesting to use that word. Yeah. Um Well, it's it's a self-judgment, isn't it? It is. Yeah. You know, I I could have done better. I should have had the courage. It's what that kind of says. Yeah. It's interesting, Gabor, you said when you when you turned 80 Or as a consequence of you turning 80, you realized that while 13 years

ago you gave up your medical practice, Yeah. will you be alive in 13 years? That's That's very striking. Yeah. Are you afraid of death? Um in principle I'm not, you know, um but I don't really know till I have to Face it. I won't know how afraid I am until the confronts me. You know? At this point I feel healthy and I get to do what I want to do and I I vigor and I have interests and excitement and and love and and um likes and dislikes and I'm quite alive, you know? What happens

when I have to confront the Actuality of it? I have no idea how I'm going to respond. So, it sometimes I get fear around it. I mean, there's I don't want to give this up. I don't want to give up this life. But other times I say, "Well, if I do, I've lived and and it's been good and there's not much to regret, you know?" So, yes and no, but I won't really know until I'm up against it. You've spoken publicly before about your um your journeys with plant medicine. Yeah. Does that change anything in

for you, I guess, or has that changed anything in terms of how you may view what happens at the end of human life? Because people many people will say for them it does change how they perceive themselves, how they perceive death, how they perceive what this experience of life actually Really is. Well, specifically as you're probably aware, they have done studies on end-of-life anxiety with psilocybin, so-called magic mushrooms. And um um people report spiritual experiences. Yeah. And people report a significant abatement of anxiety they had on on dying. This is a people who are terminally

ill. Mhm. And uh nothing that the medical profession Could offer to reverse the course of their fatal illness. But they had much less anxiety about dying as a result of those spiritual experiences Mhm. that were induced by taking the mushroom. Yeah. Uh for me I've never faced death in that sense. When I think of some of my psychedelic experiences and they've been retrospect I allow Myself to sink into them I can say in that state I would not be afraid of death. I'd say that there's a larger reality than the persistence or cessation of this

particular lung Mhm. uh represents, you know. I would say that if I project myself back into those experiences. Again, how I will face it when it happens or when it becomes inevitable um I don't know. Yeah. Society's view or this society's view of people getting older Yeah. 80 seems to be the age where we often expect people to be doing less. Mhm. You know, being less mobile, less vital. Not everyone of course, but but many. Yeah. You seem to be someone who has this love of life, this vigor, this message You want to share. You

seem to be traveling all over the globe at you know, pretty regular intervals. You've you've come into London for 4 days. You're going to help me do some teaching with doctors tomorrow, which is incredible. But a lot of 80-year-olds are not doing that. Yeah. Right? And the longevity space within medicine has really exploded over the last few Years. People love talking about longevity. Mhm. Right? And I think we're missing something in our discussions about longevity. Well, I think there's a couple of things, but what do you think we're missing? I think it depends what you

mean by longevity first of all. Yeah. Right? Yes, some people want to know how can I not necessarily live longer, but be independent, mobile, vital as long as I live. So, health span versus life span. And I get that. Yeah. But there's a lot of talk these days about extending life span, living to 150 and beyond and all kinds of crazy stuff, right? And I don't want to be the I don't want to stand in the way of human progress at all. My one of my fears is that in pursuit of living longer are we

missing something about the beauty and the essence of what life Really is? Life is finite. The fact that it's finite is what makes it so beautiful. Yeah. If we could live to 200 Yeah. would we have even more of these regrets because we'd keep taking life for granted? You know what? I You're talking my language because to tell you the truth to coin a phrase, all this stuff about longevity bores me to death, you know? Um I just don't care. You know? What really matters is what does this moment bring us or what can we

bring to this moment? You know, let the future take care of itself. You know, like Jesus says Mhm. take no thought for tomorrow, you know. Yeah. And um I really think that this longevity movement is a sign of deep social anxiety. And especially You get these rich people in California with their cryo technology of freezing the body hoping that 100 years from now they'll be able to be unfrozen and there'll be treatments for the you know, bores me, you know? What really matters is for me is what makes life meaningful and active and engaged in

the present moment. And um it's interesting in English We talk about growing older. Now that's a very telling phrase because in significant ways when we get older we shrink. Mhm. You know, like our bodies our skin starts to sag, our muscles are no longer as, you know Mhm. supple and strong as they used to be. So, what does it mean to grow older? We could just say, like you said earlier, get older, which is just a chronological progression. But growing Older implies that the growth is actually possible. Mhm. So, in what sense can we actually

grow? And I think actually we can actually grow into the present moment and and and and growing in our growing our appreciation for life and what matters and and knowing what doesn't matter and growing in wisdom. Indigenous cultures they don't talk about elderly, they talk about elders. Yeah. A huge difference. Yeah. So, um I think there's a natural reverence for age that senior cultures would respect and modern society kind of um dismisses, you know? Now, do I wish that my hair was blacker and more curly the way it used to be? Yeah, I do, you

know? And it wasn't gray and my hair wasn't Thinning at the top and I sure I wish that, but uh at the same time I would not want to be as unconscious as I was Yeah. when my hair was blacker and curlier, you know? Yeah, this is such an interesting point. I've spoken to several menopause experts on this show over the past years. I remember when doing some research on one of the conversations I came across research showing that in cultures where women are revered as they get older Yeah. their wisdom is respected, they're seen

as really important parts of the community to see. Right. Those cultures report less menopausal symptoms. Isn't that interesting? I did Just so I'm not misinterpreted, I want to be really clear. I'm not saying That that means that all menopausal symptoms would go away if that was the case. I just find it interesting that when the cultural view of growing old is different Yeah. we perceive ourselves as having I don't know, a different symptom profile. If If I If I can put it like that. and and the degree of suffering is different. So, that maybe they

have Symptoms or maybe they have certain features, but the suffering Mhm. is not experienced the same way. Please expand on that cuz I think some people will go, "Well, what do you mean? If you're either getting symptoms or you're not getting symptoms." Explain what you mean by perception of, you know, the suffering essentially. Well, I was talking to somebody else about this today. So, in As you as you and I know in Western medicine we kind of medicalize everything. And so, we talk about premenstrual syndrome. Now, which PMS is a syndrome. It's a medical entity.

Mhm. What is it really? Is that under the impact of hormonal changes women get more sensitized. So, they might have more physical pain and more upset. But we could see that as pathological or we could actually say that it's a Time of truth-telling. Mhm. That the hormones do sensitize them to things that are not functioning in in their lives, which the rest of the time they're culturated to acquiesce with and to put up with. Yeah. But the menstrual ferment in their bodies makes it less tolerable. So, instead of seeing that as a pathology we could

see it as a time of insight. And what if they actually listen to their bodies and listen to what their Body's saying no to that the rest of the month they kind of Mhm. suppress then that could be seen as a time of wisdom rather than a time of suffering. So, the the physical things are there, but it but it doesn't have to be experienced as suffering. No. Could be experienced as a time of truth-telling. And actually a lot of women have told me that once they become Aware of that, their relationship to menstruation is

totally different. And I think that's what you're saying about menopause as well. Yeah. This kind of speaks to the second regret, which is I wish I hadn't worked so hard. Yeah. And what I mean by that is I agree that for many women Yeah. And I can think of so many patients like this, their their hormonal symptoms Were actually showing them that the way you're currently living is not in harmony with your body. Exactly. And of course sometimes people struggle to make changes. It's hard to make change. Maybe their life is mega stressful and at

that moment they can't change it for whatever reason and I can totally I empathize with that. I I understand. Yeah. But for some people who are able to, it's in sometimes it's one of the best Things that has happened to them. Yeah. Now, this thing about I wish I hadn't worked so hard. That's an interesting one because I wish I hadn't worked so hard. And what do I mean by that? Like Like uh Speaking for myself, and I don't know if this is true for you, but I became a physician for some really good reasons.

One of them was I genuinely wanted to help suffering humanity. And I thought Medicine is a perfect pathway through which I could help people. That's a genuine and I meant it. I also chose a profession where I was fairly confident of making a decent living so I could support a a life for myself and my family. That's legitimate. But those reasons don't make you work too hard. They make you work hard, but They don't make you work too hard. What makes you work too hard, and that's what these people are saying, is you're driven by

something that you're not even aware of. And what I wasn't aware of when I went to medical school and then when I was a physician for decades, is how driven I was to justify my existence in the world. And to prove for that I was important and worthwhile and So on. And that had to do with the loss of those that confidence owing to early childhood trauma. And so the It's not a question Nobody says I wish I would have hadn't worked hard. To achieve something in life, you have to work hard. They're saying I

wish I wouldn't have worked too hard. And that too part, the t o part, comes from being driven by unconscious needs To validate your existence. Where why should any human being have to validate their existence? You know? And so that's what they're saying. And when you're driven to work too hard, you actually ignore what matters. And what matters is um what you were telling me last night about how much it matters for you to spend time with your family. So every summer you take a number bunch of weeks away from your podcast and you just

Spend time enjoying your kids and your and your and your wife and your family. And I didn't do that. I for me it was very hard to even take holidays. I always felt I had to keep working. Somebody was in pregnant, my God, what if I would miss the delivery? Like the baby couldn't enter the world without me, you know? So that drivenness is what makes people work too hard. And so not a matter of working hard, it's a matter of working Too hard. And where does that come from? Again, that comes from childhood trauma.

A lot of doctors, and I have several friends like this, they don't take their full allowance of annual leave. Mhm. Sounds like you may have been similar. I had that tendency, yeah. Yeah, and often people will say, and I have a friend who says this, "Yeah, but my patients need me." No, they don't need them. They need medical Help. Yeah. But I think we have to ask ourselves, and this is very very common in medicine actually. I'm sure it's common in other professions as well. Yeah. It's interesting when you don't take your full allowance of

annual leave that your contract entitles you to. It's Yeah. often paid time off, right? It's part of your job. Yeah. When you're not taking it, Of course there can be reasons for that. There can be reasonable reasons. There can be work reasons. But if you're not, I think you I think it may be worth reflecting on some of those underlying you know, that those real drivers of that. Well, it occurs to me that what your friend is actually saying is not that my patients need me, but I need my patients. Yeah. To feel okay. And

when I'm not working to help them, I don't know who I am and I don't feel comfortable with myself. I need them. Now, that means get thee to a therapist and deal with it. And not and not only that, even though your capacity to help your patients over time will be eroded That's right. by the way you're stressing yourself and you're not taking care of yourself. And physicians are notoriously programmed to ignore themselves. And there was a Very interesting study that I mentioned in the book The Myth of Normal. They looked at the fraying of

the chromosomes um of people and you know When we're born, we're born with certain structures called telomeres and telomeres are DNA structures at the end of our chromosomes. And their fraying and their shortening Is a marker of aging and of stress. And they looked at the the telomeres of medical residents compared to other people their age, they age faster. They fray faster. And so physicians are driven to actually um not spare themselves and to literally consume themselves in their work. Now, in the long term, that may make you a very popular and very successful doctor,

but in the long term It's going to be at the expense of your marriage and of your children and of your own mental and physical health. For me, if I look at that situation and I reflect on society and culture, what I see these days is a very it's very me-focused culture where community has been gradually eroded out. Yeah. And therefore, if we think about a human Being, a human being needs to feel that they're of value to other people. We we need that. Yeah. In our tribes, you know, 50,000 years ago, we would have

felt of value because we would have a role. And other people would see that role. They would benefit from it and we would benefit from the things they were doing, you know, whether it's someone's hunting, someone's gathering, someone's putting The fire or whatever it might be. In this me-focused culture where it's all me me me and what are my needs and what do I need to do and how can I better myself? I feel that we often don't feel of value to others. We don't feel important. And so it makes sense that in that culture

you might overwork. You might keep pushing yourself because if you're not working and feeling Important there, then actually you may not have that sensation in any other aspects of your life. Well, if Well, if you weren't given the um It's very simple. If in early childhood you're given a sense that you're valued just cuz you existed. Your parents welcome you and validate you and value you and and celebrate you Just cuz you are. Then you don't have to keep proving it afterwards. Mhm. But if you don't get that sense, then you have to be important.

Yeah. So that sense of needing to be important has to come from missing out on being valued for who you are or being only valued for your achievements. You know, you're valued Like Look, my parents, bless their souls, but they valued my intelligence, you know? And so A lot of my persona was caught up in being smart and and proving my value that way. Well, it's good to be intelligent, but your value should doesn't depend on Mhm. or shouldn't depend on any one quality, whether you're cute or cuddly or handsome or successful or good at

sports or smart in school, any of that. Your value is intrinsic Mhm. or innate, inherent cuz you're a human being. In This society, as you say, it tends to value people for what they do. And so that can become very very addictive. But again, going back to your friend who says my parent my my patients need me, and you think about it, and I'm not accusing them of anything, but they're not realizing just how egotistical that statement is. It's as if it depended on them. Mhm. Their patients need good medical care, but they don't need

him Or her Mhm. or them specifically, which means that they should be able to take care of themselves as long as they make sure that when they're not there, Mhm. their patients are receiving Mhm. the care that they need. So it's not about us. And I used to think it was always about me. If I'm not there for the delivery of this particular woman's baby, oh my God. You know? Like as if it all depended on me. It's Probably a control issue there as well, isn't there? That I I know how I would do it.

Exactly. So I need to be there cuz I know how I would manage this birth and that sort of stuff. Yeah. Which is an inability to let go. Exactly. I guess someone else can probably do this as well. Yeah, or if they can do it as well, so be it. You know? Yeah. As I was walking to the studio this morning thinking about our conversation, the word impressive kept coming up for me. Mhm. And I've been reflecting on the word impressive because again, I think culturally we we think it's a good thing to impress others.

Okay, that bit of work you did is impressive. Mhm. But actually, if you if you really unpick impressive, or certainly if I do It, it implies to me, and maybe this is my own bias because this is what I have done for much of my life, Yeah. I changed who I am in order to impress others. Yeah. I didn't feel I impressed others by being myself. Yeah. I impressed them by changing. Yeah. So what comes up for you when you hear the word impressive? Have we got it wrong? Has it been you know, has it

been taken to mean something it's not? Like how how do you see the word impressive? Hm. Well, um impressive, first of all, has to do with what? It has to do with our impact on other people. How others see us. So, if I can just be myself and express my Own truth and not drive myself into activities that are not good for me and people are impressed, well, that's great. But if my intention is to impress other people, if I need for me to make a certain impression in somebody else's mind, then where am I

living? Then I'm living in their minds rather than in myself. So, the question is, where do I want to live? Here or in your mind? You know, and uh our society is so um addicted to people being impressive in the minds of others. That means that we live in the minds of others don't more than we live in ourselves. So, if I can if you can be yourself and find that impre- if I find that Impressive, that's great. But you're not doing it to impress me. You're just doing it cuz that's you're expressing who you

are. If I'm impressed, great. If I'm not impressed, that doesn't take anything away from you. But to the degree that we dependent on impressing others, we're robbing ourselves. So, that's how I see that word. Just taking a quick break to give a shout-out to Vivo barefoot shoes. Now, I've been a huge fan of Vivo barefoot for over 10 years now, well before they started supporting my podcast. They are the only shoes that I wear and they really have had a huge impact on my own life and the lives of many of my patients. You see,

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Audience a 15% off one-time code when you make your first order and they make it really easy for you to give them a try. They give a 100-day trial for new customers. So, if you don't like them, you just send them back for a full refund. I'm a huge fan. I really hope you take advantage of this offer. To get your 15% off code, all you need to do is go to vivobarefoot.com {slash} live more or click on the link in the description box below. The third regret that Bronnie wrote about was, "I wish I

had the courage to express my feelings." yeah. Which is I guess not dissimilar to the first one about living a life that's true to yourself. No, and it again it again there's the word courage that shows up. And these people are judging themselves. A more interesting way to put it is why is it that I didn't express my feelings? You know, now here's the thing. Um Again in my writing in the midst of normal, I quote this great neuroscientist who died in his mid-70s of cancer a few years ago. Those of us who knew him

still mourn him. His name was Dr. Jaak Panksepp, p a n k s e p p. He was uh from the Baltic states. Whether he was Estonian, I think he was, but maybe Latvian, you know. And he was an Affective neuroscientist. So, he studied the neurobiology of emotions. And he wrote a book called The Archaeology of the Mind. It's a one of the seminal books of modern science. And he pointed out that we share certain emotional circuits with other animals. So, we have circuit to any capitalize these circuits, these systems. So, you the c a

r e, the care system. And there's a system for anger. System for fear. For lust. For playfulness, for joy, in other words. For seeking, which is curiosity. Um grief. And we share these brain circuits with other mammals. In other words, these emotions are not luxuries. They are emotionally I should say they are evolutionarily determined aspects of Who we are. So, if you take the care system, it's essential because without care, the mammalian infant doesn't survive. There's got to be something in the parent's brain that drives that parent to take care of the infant and something

that's in the infant's brain that impels them to connect with the parent in order to be taken care of. That's just evolutionary biology. So, we have all these emotional systems. Anger is one of them. Um as I mentioned, fear, grief are others. And children, one of the emotional needs of children, when I studied and invest- you know, and interviewed experts on child development, uh one of the things I learned and write about is that one of the needs of children for healthy brain development is the freedom to experience and express all the emotions that come

up for them. They're just necessary for health. Um now, what happens in this society where a lot of parents get the message that certain emotions on the part of their kids are not acceptable. So, you know, a kid might experience a loss, like a dog might die or grandpa might die and the child is upset. And the parent can't handle the child's grief. So, snap out of it, it's just a Dog or or yeah, get over it. People die. You know, um or a child experiences anger uh cuz you didn't give them a cookie before

dinner, you know, and a 2-year-old throws a tantrum and you can't handle it. Um I think you and I have talked about this before. Then the child gets the message that in order to be acceptable to the parent, they have to suppress their Emotions. So, when these people talk about that, and that suppression of emotion, as I've often made the case with you and in my books, actually undermine health and and and our physiology and our immune system. So, when these people in their dying weeks regret not having had the courage to express their emotions,

what they're really talking about is that long time Before, when they were children, they were forced to suppress their emotions for the sake of being accepted. Yeah. And now they regret it cuz they they sense that they were forced to abandon themselves. And so, again, I would remove the word courage and ask instead of judging them for lacking courage, I would say, "What happened to them?" Because again, no infant lacks the capacity to express their emotions. Yeah. So, if they lose it, it's cuz they learned that they had to. It says there's something practical around

this point, Gabor. If if there's any parents listening and their kids, let's say, sometimes get angry or have a tantrum, whatever it might be. Yeah. Of course, there is a certain conditioning in our modern certainly in Western society about what one should do About that. Yeah. Given your view in terms of what is important for a child and what you've just said, what would you encourage a parent to do when their child is I was going to use the word playing up, but but that's a ridiculous term because playing up is a societal construct. The

child is just expressing emotions we're calling it playing up cuz we don't like, You know, what it's doing or what the people next door are thinking or whatever it might be, right? The North American term is acting out. Acting out. Yeah, do they use that phrase here? Yeah, they do. They use this phrase here. Yeah. So, so going back to that um the parent who may be struggling but wants to be a better parent, wants to go, "Actually, you know what, Gabor, I really want to make sure that I allow My child to express their

emotions." Yeah. Do you have any advice for me? What would you say to them? No, I do. Well, so you know, there's um we could talk about three modes of parenting. One is the permissive parenting, where you allow any behavior and you don't interfere, you know, that's not that's the worst thing you can do. Kids needs to But that is allowing them To express themselves. Yeah, but there's a difference. Um Okay. They might express themselves by hitting their sibling, for example. And you don't allow that. Parents need to Kids need to feel that somebody's in

charge. Yeah. Parenting is not a democracy. It's a hierarchy. Um in a hierarchy, there's a dominant force. The parent dominates the child not to exploit or to suppress, but to nurture and to support. You know, so That you know, you live in Manchester and I don't know how cold it gets in Manchester, but if you have a 1-year-old child, they don't get to vote on whether they get to crawl outside in the wintertime in Manchester, you know, naked, you know? The parent says, "No, you don't go outside naked, you know, you have to go put

clothes on." That's just how it is. It's a hierarchy, it's not a democracy. The 1-year-old doesn't Get a vote on being going to the slush and the snow in the middle of December or whenever. Um so, that's permissive parenting, that's not very good. Uh then there's repressive parenting, which some experts that we've talked about advocate. That's authoritarian parenting. In between them is the golden mean. So, this permissive parenting here, authoritarian parenting here, then There's authoritative parenting in the middle. Authoritative parenting is, "I'm in charge. I know what's good for you. Um I'm the authority. Um

so, I know what to do with you." So, if a child is upset, you say, "Oh, you're upset. You know, you're angry with Mommy. Mommy wouldn't let you have a cookie before dinner. Yeah, you're really upset about that. Yeah, well, come here. I know how you feel." In Other words, you validate the emotion. You don't punish the child for it and you hold the child cuz the child needs to learn that they can go through these difficult emotions and get through them and still be loved. And still be loved, yeah. Now, that doesn't mean you

let them pull the cat's tail or to break the break the glass, you know, smash the furniture or hit their sibling, but it does mean you validate the emotions and you hold them. And then They learn, "Ah." And and actually and when they were it's also age-specific. Like you there's no point saying to an angry 1 and 1/2-year-old, "Let's find Let's express it through words." They don't have the words. But to 5-year-old you can say, "Can we find some words for your anger?" In other words, you can teach them to Express their emotions in ways

that are um socially appropriate. So, at any age you have to be age-appropriate, but fundamentally you validate the emotions and you hold the child and you make them feel that you can have these emotions. I don't want you behaving that way, but you can have the emotion and I'm not going to reject you for it. It's not that hard and people do it on intuitively sometimes. Yeah. And The impacts of parenting like that will be felt for the rest of that child's life. Well, absolutely. And that's the key, isn't it? You look at look around

society, it's very, very hard to not make the case that we have to set up society so that those early years are where the kids get good nutrition, they have calm environments, they have Present parents. You know, I'm always shocked at the amount of leave that people in America get on mothers get in jobs in America. I think one of my friends' partners in America got 2 weeks off. Which which I I I thought what, 2 weeks off after giving birth? Well, when I researched The Myth of Normal, I found that 25% of women in

the States go back to work within 2 weeks of giving birth. Which 25% of women, needless to say, this is both economically and racially determined, but it means that it's a massive abandonment of the child cuz it ends from the point of of the development of enzymes in the child, the child's physiological unfoldment, psychological security. They need the mother for many, many, many, many months. And you try and take an infant away from a an orangutan At 2 weeks and see what happens. You know, and in fact they've done some very cruel studies with monkeys

that shows the impact of maternal deprivation at those early ages. You know, studies that are terrible to read about. And they prove what? They prove that love and contact and connection is important, something we should have known all along. But the point is That that statistic that 25% of women have to go back to work within 2 weeks of work within 2 weeks of giving birth, it's a massive abandonment of children. This the impact of which will show up in their mental and physical health decades on. And then they wonder why there's so many problems.

Tomorrow is the yearly Prescribing Lifestyle Medicine course that I've been running with a colleague, Dr. Aseem Malhotra, since 2018 and of course you're going to be the guest speaker tomorrow and I'm I'm really excited that we're going to be able to communicate with doctors and share your work and how they can bring your work into their practice. It's really, really exciting. One of the things I'm hoping you're going to be able to share with the audience tomorrow is what I think is the biggest hole in medical school Training. If you'd asked me 5 years ago,

I may have said, "Oh, nutrition and sleep and we need to teach doctors about the importance of this stuff." And we do. Yeah. But if I had to choose one thing that I think is the biggest hole in medical training today, for me it's that doctors a lot of doctors leave medical School without an understanding that our emotions Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah. that the way we think holding on to anger, resentment, not being able to forgive and move on, I really don't feel within medicine there's an understanding that this can contribute to

ill health. Yeah, it's such a gap and um I think both you and I have had to Discover it not as a consequence, but despite our medical education. And when you're in practice and you I mean, as a family physician, um we do have an advantage over specialist colleagues in that we know people before they get sick. So, we get to see who gets sick. And I couldn't help but notice that people's Emotional lives are so intertwined with the physiological health. And as you suggest, nobody in medical school told me that. It's such a huge

gap. And it it it also has to do with how we relate to ourselves, by the way, cuz the way doctors are trained is very often very stressful and very almost traumatic in significant ways. So that in that's why I mentioned the word self-care because in being trained to Stoically ignore ourselves, we also are dismissing the importance of emotions in our clients. So that I wish there was more emphasis in medical school on dealing with our own stuff. Yeah, for sure. And in conjunction with that, therefore, the awareness of the importance of people's emotional lives.

Yeah. And and what's really interesting here is that some of the great pioneers of medicine have known this all along and They've said it hundreds of years ago. Well, Jean-Martin Charcot, who first described multiple sclerosis, said that this is related to stress and grief. And it is statistically and according to studies since then, but he just saw it. He didn't, you know, and there's a great British surgeon, James Paget, you know, Paget's disease. And he operated on women with breast cancer and he said that breast cancer is inevitably related To emotional factors. That is so

evident that it's hard to ignore. And so, these great pioneers said this and their teachings have been completely ignored. Let's be really clear, this is such a delicate area for people because many people perceive that as fault and as blame. I know you don't mean it like that. I don't mean it like that when I talk about it either. But often it's like, "What are you saying, that I did This to myself?" Right? You must have had that before. People must have said that. Just just clarify that for them, please. Well, really we've been talking

about it that the suppression of emotion, nobody's born with it. And it's not a lack of courage or wisdom. It's a programmed response to Childhood experience. So, people have got the message before before they had any choice in the matter that if they are truly themselves, if they express who they are, their emotions, just like we've been talking about, they won't be accepted. So, that's a programming that people are ingrained in in their early childhood. How's that their fault? It's just the way they adapted to the Environment necessarily as a matter of fact, it was

an inevitable and unavoidable adaptation cuz the alternative of being rejected by their families or their milieu was not acceptable to a small child. So, therefore, nobody does this to themselves in any conscious or deliberate sense. What I can tell you is that when people are diagnosed and they become aware of these dynamics, They find that liberating. So, in The Myth of Normal, I quote the American singer Sheryl Crow who was diagnosed with breast cancer and she said that before the diagnosis, "I was always pleasing others and not expressing myself." And there was always a voice

in my head that I'm wrong and I have to adjust myself to other people's expecta- I'm paraphrasing her, but she but she said, "I've learned differently now and now I'm really Paying attention to myself." So, again, that's this idea of disease as teacher. Now, Sheryl Crow wasn't born like that and she didn't choose to be that way. That was her response to her upbringing. So, nobody's being faulted here, but we are saying, "People, if you allow that disease to wake you up and to teach you something, you might have a whole lot better life than

you could have imagined." Yeah. Well, I think this is really really interesting. We can first of all make the case to people that emotions matter to the express the the ability to express your emotions is important if you repress them. Yeah. It may well have some quite severe physical consequences. Yeah. So, let's say that a doctor accepts that goes, "Okay. So, what do I do with that?" Well, What did I just do with it? Well, here's the thing. It depends how you're oriented. Like, I'm kind of psychologically oriented. I've always been interested I've always been

interested in it. So, for me it was a natural movement from strictly focusing on the physical symptoms to dealing with the whole person. Another physician May recognize the value of this, but not have the orientation to deal with it. But, at least they can say to their clients, "Listen, there's a lot of information now. So, when you come in with your rheumatoid arthritis or your multiple sclerosis or your chronic eczema or chronic migraines or irritable bowel syndrome or inflammatory bowel disease or whatever you happen to present with, There's a lot of information now, a lot

of scientific information information that uh shows the connection between actually in fact the unity of mind and body and the inextricable mm relationship between the immune system and emotions and so on. I'm not myself trained in that. I'm going to deal with the physical aspects of your illness. I'm going to prescribe for you the anti-inflammatory Or the immune suppressants or the steroids or whatever you happen to need to mitigate the symptoms, but can I send you to somebody so you can talk about this stuff? Would that interest you?" Yeah. so you can do that. So,

we're not necessarily talking about every doctor having to become an expert on this, but at least they should be aware of it so they can steer people to a broader approach to their illness. Number one. Number two, there's certain simple things any doctor can ask. Like, one of my books, When the Body Says No, that's the title. Um and in the myth of normal, there's a chapter called what Before the Body Says No. You can ask your client, it's a very simple question. "Where in your life were you not saying no? Where there's a no

that wants to be said, but you're not saying it for the Sake of pleasing others." Can you just consider that one? Because that simple issue of not saying no can play havoc with your health. Because if you're not saying no when they when you when you're wanting to say no, you're actually suppressing yourself. And then you're taking on more stress and more burden. So, those simple questions any doctor can ask. So, it's not as complicated as all that. Yeah. But, the point is the first step is just to be aware of the connection that you

mentioned between emotions and physiology. Then, if the physician wants to take on a deeper study of it, they can. If they don't, at least they can guide people to to to to to explore that connection somewhere else. Yeah, completely agree. Thank you. Yeah. Fourth regret, "I wish I stayed in touch with my friends." Yeah. Well, what we're talking there is and it goes back to the others about working too hard, you know, for example. Um what what are what are they discussing there is the need for attachment, for connection, for belonging. And what these people

are saying is, "I was too driven by whatever factors Impelled me to ignore my personal relationships and to pour my attention on things that ultimately don't matter. My acquisition, my attainment, my achievement uh rather than the heart-to-heart human contact with people that matter to me." And again, people are driven to be that way and when they look back on their life, they regret it because Nobody has as often been said, nobody ever on their deathbed regrets not going to the office often enough. But, they do regret the heart connection that that that they sacrificed. Have

you stayed in touch with your friends? Well, you know, that's where you could say that I haven't. I mean, I have more much more recently. It It matters to me much more now. But, over the years, um I put work and my busyness and my writing ahead of all that. Is it at all balanced out by the fact that your work and your writings have influenced the lives of millions of people? I guess what I'm trying to get at is on a personal level, you may have sacrificed your friendships. Yeah. But, perhaps the world has

benefited from Dr. Maté doing that. Is Is that fair to say? It's fair to say and to some extent I accept that that I made certain decisions and those decisions have benefited many and it means that there's certain things I missed out on. Um but not completely. And uh I'm much more prone now to seek out those friendships and to strengthen them and to celebrate them and to value them. And I have I have I have some really good friends, you know. And and the people that really care about me and I care about them

and we're there for each other no matter what. You know, so that matters to me much more than it used to. And uh To put it to the real test, if I were to choose to live my life over again, I wouldn't live it in this way. I would say, "Yeah, I I have some insights. I have some capacity to articulate some truths that are really important and I'm not going to let that dominate how I live my life." Um and I think it would have been possible For me to express that voice and and

and and to mm put those teachings out to the world that I get the feeling feedback that it does help a lot of people, but I could have done that without the drivenness, without the sacrificing of the heart without the and and connection that sometimes that entails. So, you know, again, if I could live it do it over Again, I would do it differently and I don't think in the end I would have detracted from my message. And if it did, I would accept that. Yeah. To make sure you're taking action after watching this video,

I've created a free breathing guide that's going to help you reduce stress, calm your mind, and boost your energy. In this guide, I share with you six really simple breathing practices that work immediately. Even Just 1 minute a day will start to make a big difference. To receive your free guide, all you have to do is click on the link in the description box below. Fifth one is, "I wish I'd let myself be happier." Yeah. What does that say? Well, that always reminds me of because I mentioned Dr. Panksepp and his concept of the brain

circuits. One of them is for play and joyfulness. And um Do you know Winnie the Pooh? Yeah. Okay. Not personally. The book. Uh and uh it's always been one of my favorite books. And I've talked about this before. The end of that book would bring tears to my eyes for years cuz how it ends is Christopher Robin. By the way, that's a whole other thing. The relationship between A. A. Milne and his son Christopher was a very fraught and difficult one. Right. And and Christopher actually resented the books cuz he felt that his father was

buying these toys to write about rather than for his own benefit. Wow. Although, they had a very different There's a photograph of the two of them and the kid is looking so alienated. He Had a tough life. And but that's a whole other story. But, the book in the in the book, Christopher Robin, the little boy, now has to go to school. Yeah. And he has to learn about history and factors and mathematics and so on. And he's telling his friends, the toy animals, that he won't be able to play with them so much anymore.

And in the end, Christopher and Winnie The bear of little brain uh who's the smartest of the whole lot, and they walk off together and they the book ends with the statement, "Something like and whatever they do wherever they go in the enchanted forest, the little boy and his bear will always be playing together." And that phrase would bring tears to my eyes for years. Because play is so important and joy is so important and that's what these people are talking about. And they didn't allow themselves to experience it. They sacrificed the play and the

joy for all these other things. You know, and so um Yeah. Yeah. the good thing is, you know, um I'm in my marriage, the best thing and you know what the best thing in my Marriage is? The way we play together. Mhm. The first time I dated my wife, Ray, I knocked on the parents' door and I said, "Can Ray come out and play?" And we've been doing it ever since. And so um I believe what's being described in that last regret is people sacrificed their playfulness, their joyfulness, for the sake of being accepted and

being Successful and all that. It's a huge one. Play is built into our brains. Kids play spontaneously, infants play. Mhm. And um in that sense, we can all be Winnie the Pooh and and Christopher Robin, we can always keep playing in the enchanted forest and that's just essential, I think. In that final regret, is the word happier. Yeah. What does happiness mean to you? Uh really it means the capacity to play and to be in the present moment and and and and and you know, the kids when they my kids play, they don't worry about

the the the the the the the the the the the appropriately, they don't worry about the war or whatever or the or or or or or or or or climate change, they're just playing in the moment, they're fully present to themselves in imaginative, almost hypnotically imaginative states. So, happiness just means being in the present and being allowed to be no matter what, to have the capacity to play. A lot of people today, Gabor, and I think you have struggled with this as well, from what I know, feel with so much heartache and suffering in the

world, Yeah. they feel that they have no right to be happy. What's your take on that? Well, um first of all, um Bob Dylan said somewhere that it's difficult to be completely happy when other people are suffering. That's true. So, what I this this is a time of terrible suffering, you know, I feel about Gaza and the terrible things that Are happening there. How can I be completely happy? I can't be completely happy. I can't cuz I can't not think about that. The horror of it. Um but at the same time, and this is where

I people might start get weirded out, but I'm talking about a psychedelic experience. This is 3 or 4 years ago. I did uh I work with psychedelics both as a healer, but also as a subject. And I was having a mushroom experience. And the same thing would happen with ayahuasca once. And I've always been one that felt that how could I be happy when Auschwitz is possible? When Auschwitz happened, when my grandparents perished there, how can I be happy? What right do I have to be happy If that can happen in the world? And that

did happen in the world. And both the plants showed me at some point that happened and yes, you can be happy. Mhm. That the one doesn't detract from the other. That that the capacity to be empathetic and to recognize the grief and to hold the grief does not obviate the capacity to be happy. And one doesn't one does not one is not Disloyal to the suffering in the world by allowing myself to be happy. So, there's no necessary contradiction. And I've I've seen people on death row who if they win their appeal, the best thing

they can hope for is life in jail without life in prison without parole, but they're happy. And how do they become happy? Meditation, Working through their traumas, having remorse for what they did, connecting with other people and just connecting with the present moment. And I'm thinking, my god, if people in that situation can be genuinely happy, which I've seen, I've I've I've had contact with the people, then who am I to say that I can't be happy. Yeah. So, there's so there's ultimately there's no contradiction. Yeah. Now, in This society, there's way too much emphasis

on, you know, don't worry, be happy, let's ignore all the bad stuff that's going on, let's just concentrate on how we can make ourselves pleased or or or pleasured or whatever. I'm not talking about that. No. I'm talking about being able to hold both at the same time. Yeah, you have to and this is something I feel I've really grown into over the last few years that I actually can be very happy And content Yeah. whilst there is heartache in the world, it doesn't mean I don't care. I actually deeply care. Yeah. But I realized

that it's a real skill, it's an evolution of the self to be able to hold those two. Yeah. I really do think that. I think it's growth. That's right. I very much love the phrase that's attributed to Gandhi, Be the change you want to see in the world. Yeah. I I live I try my best to live my life by that and why that's relevant to this part of the conversation is I said this once at a live event. I said, "Listen, if you watch the news and you this is a few years ago allow

the heartache that's going on in name the country, right? To affect you so much so that you Develop apathy, you can't interact with your husband, with your children, Yeah. you you you just drink more and more alcohol in the evening to numb your pain. Yeah. What does that do? Yeah. Right? You're no good to the people who are suffering, you're no good to those people around you and that then ripples to everyone around you. Whereas if you can learn to be content where you're at, Yeah. if you then do want to go and help in

Whatever way, you're much more able to, you know, volunteer, send money, whatever it might be. Yeah. So, I think this is I think this is really important point for people, especially the way things are in the world at the moment. A lot of you feel I've got no right to be happy. Yeah. Well, I I no longer believe I used to believe that and somebody once said to be said to me, "Don't be so loyal to your suffering." And um that's a lesson I've had to learn fairly late in life. Yeah. Um and as I

quote in The Myth of Normal, my friend Bessel van der Kolk, the trauma uh psychiatrist, looked at me once, this is about 10, 12 years ago, we were having lunch and he said, "Gabor, you don't have to drag Auschwitz around everywhere, people." And what he meant by that Is that you don't have to let that affect your present moment. That you can be aware of it, hold the memory of it, but not let it determine your internal states. You know, and and it's true and I I I understood intellectually at that time what he meant,

but it was only later that it I was actually able to emotionally let go. Let's just talk about forgiveness then because a lot of the time people say, You know, I just can't forgive. Yeah. What happened to me was wrong. Yeah. Now, I accept what happened to someone could can be wrong, Yeah. but it doesn't necessarily follow that you can't forgive. Yeah. What's your take on forgiveness? Well, you know, in our last night we were talking about a woman that we both met and admired Tremendously, Edith Eger. Yeah. And Edith, as I told you, was

16 years old when I was 1 year old. She lived in a town in what is now Southern Slovakia, then was Northern Hungary, called Kassa or Košice, and her family were taken to Auschwitz. Mhm. And um my grandparents would have been either on the same shipment to Auschwitz or within the next day or so. And her parents perished and she survived with her sister. And she's become this psychotherapist, she's written a couple of wonderful books that I know you've met her and interviewed her. Yeah. And in one of her books, she describes going to the

Berghof in Bavarian Alps where Hitler used to have his lair and he went there she went there to forgive Hitler. And um it doesn't mean that it was okay what he did. She did that to liberate herself. She didn't she said, "I don't want to keep him in this prison in my heart for the rest of my life. I've worked too hard to attain happiness and joy to let this tension and this constriction control me. So, the forgiveness wasn't making okay or or pardoning Hitler for his for all the evil that he perpetrated in the

world, but it's her her letting go Of the emotions around it and of the tension and the tightness around it. So, forgiveness is not for the other person, it's for yourself. Now, when I work with forgiveness, I don't advise people to forgive. If If If as a matter of fact, I do the opposite. I say to people, "Before you forgive, allow yourself to feel the full anger that's in you. Let you Let yourself fully experience the anger that's there Cuz once you do, it'll dissipate. You'll let go of it. So, don't do it in order

to forgive. Do it in order to liberate yourself. Now, let's say I was abused as a child. But, let's say I find myself a fully liberated, present-oriented, in contact with myself human being. Then, what does that mean? It means nothing was taken away from me. It means that whatever happened caused me a lot of pain over the years, but it didn't limit my capacity. I wasn't robbed of anything. So, what's there to forgive? So, uh Yeah. And and and you can also ask yourself or anybody, when you haven't forgiven, what's in your heart? What's in

your body? Do you like that state that you're in? Uh the tension. Do you like that? Is that how you want to be? Do you think that's really helping you? So, I don't go out of my way to teach No, I know that in a lot of spiritual practices, there are forgiveness practices and in my own Buddhist practice and a lot of spiritual practices, there are forgiveness meditations and prayers. Yeah. My mind doesn't go there. But, my mind does say, "I I also have to experience all the rage, all the hatred, all the anger that's

in you and be with it and see what happens to it." Yeah. And what happens to it once you pay attention to it, it actually dissipates. And so, when Edith goes to the Berghof to forgive Hitler, she's Just saying, "I don't want to hold on to this stuff anymore. It's not okay what you did, but I don't want to hold on to this stuff anymore." Yeah. It's It's fascinating. I think curiosity is is often a very helpful pathway to forgiveness. Cuz, if you get curious about that other person, just to why did they act that

way? Mhm. You know, I'm not talking About Hitler here. I'm talking about anyone. even with Hitler. Yeah, what what were the conditions in that person's life that led to that? If I was that person, I'd be behaving in exactly the same way because I would have had their parents and their childhood experiences and their bullying, et cetera, et cetera. Exactly. Once you look at the world through that lens, Your initial approach becomes compassion. Forgiveness comes as a side effect of getting curious. That's totally right. And there's an expression that you may be familiar with. It

goes, "To understand is to forgive." Yeah. And it begins with curiosity. Yeah. So, I and I think that that curiosity is the essential quality that actually leads to compassion in the end. Now, compassion doesn't mean Tolerance of bad behavior. It doesn't mean validating or justifying crimes against um nature or crimes against other human beings. But, it takes away that quality of tension where you make yourself superior to reality and you make and you put yourself in a position to judge reality. You know, "I'm above it and I'm in a position to judge." That's not a

comfortable I mean, actually, it is Comfortable for a lot of people to be there, but it's a way of not dealing with their own stuff. So, I do think that curiosity is the key. Just to wrap this conversation up, Gabor, we've been talking a lot about these regrets, the regrets of the dying. Yeah. And the final question I want to put to you is about the word regret. Mhm. I have been playing with the idea over the last 12 months or so that regret is actually a form of perfectionism. Mhm. So, I actually now very

much subscribe to the philosophy of no regrets, but not in the not in the kind of derogatory way, you know, "I'm going to live my life my way. Doesn't matter who comes in my way." Yeah. No, with this really compassionate understanding that I've always done the best that I can Yeah. based upon where I was in life at that time. Yeah. So, even the things that I look back on and go, "Actually, you know what? If I was in that situation again today, I would act differently." I don't see them as regrets. I see them

as situations that happened that have taught me something which is allowing me to be a better version of myself today. Exactly. So, in my life today, there's there is no room for regrets anymore. Mhm. And I guess I would love to know, you know, right at the end here, what's your perspective on the word regret? Um I think um chronic regret is debilitating. Mhm. Um it's a lack of self-forgiveness. It's um also kind of egotism of that that that that that somehow I'm that important. Um it's quite something to recognize I do Recognize that some

of the way I parented my kids, the way I showed up, I've often talked about this in your program, too, wasn't the best for them, but it was the best I could do at the time. So, it's not the question of justifying anything, but it's also not dwelling on the past. Mhm. Regret is to dwell on the past. What's the point? It's quite something to recognize that I did things that had I known differently, I would not have done the same way. That's just learning. Um um regret is an emotional state of that values the

past more than the present and it um accuses yourself of doing things for which you had no Consciousness to do otherwise. So, that's where I stand with regret. Yeah. Gabor, you know what a big fan I am of your work. Um it's just incredible to see the impacts you're having on so many people around the world. I'm very lucky to consider you a friend these days. It's been great to get to know you over the last few years. Um for someone who Has heard us speak today and something connected with them, Mhm. something you said

spoke to them and they thought, "Wow, yeah, you know what? I'm carrying around old stuff with me today. I don't express my emotions. I'm not living a life that is true to me." Yeah. What are some of your final words for them? Well, it's the word that you used. Curiosity. So, not, "Why am I living this way?" but, "Mhm, why am I living this way? You know, what happened to me? What am I carrying here?" So, uh the key phrase is precisely the one that you introduced, the necessity to be curious. Yeah. Um in a

compassionate way. So, you don't do an interrogation of yourself like you were um prosecuting detective of, "Why did you or why did you not?" but Compassionately, "Why did you not?" Yeah. "Why did you?" And if you ask these questions compassionately, um and with curiosity, the answers will emerge as well the capacity for you make yourself for you to make different choices as you move forward. So, where there wasn't choice before cuz you were compelled or or driven, now you can have some Freedom if you're willing to be curious. So, curiosity is the word. Yeah. Gabor,

all your books are fantastic. If someone is at the start of their Gabor Mate journey, which book would you direct them towards? Well, you know, um that depends on what they're dealing with. You know, I mean, if they're interested in addiction specifically, They should read my book on addiction. Or parenting, they should read Hold On to Your Kids. But, if they want to get the overall picture, the package, you know, it's it's the certainly the most recent, The Myth of Normal, in which I combine pretty much everything I knew at the time that I wrote

it and I already It was only published a year and a half ago. It's been published now in 40 countries and 38 Languages. It's been a best-seller in a number of countries. That's the one I would start with. Yeah. Um but if you're interested in specific topics, then seek out the like ADHD, you should read Scattered I would advise you to read Scattered Minds. You know, so, it just depends what you're dealing with. But, if you want an overall immersion in What I have to say, it's The Myth of Normal. That's what I would I

would I would say. The Myth of Normal, over 1 million copies sold, it says on this one. It's been a smash hit around the world. It's a great book. Gabor, thanks for coming back on the show. Uh thank you. I hope to do it again. If you enjoyed that conversation, I think you are really going to enjoy this One about the top five regrets of the dying and what we can learn from them. I spent eight years looking after dying people and the most common regret during those eight years was I wish I'd lived a

life true to myself, not the life that other people expected of me.