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to be human today.
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is to be stressed out.
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Come on!
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You re stressed out, I m stressed out, we re all stressed out.
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Which is why I m so excited to be talking to Dr. Aditi Nirukar today about stress.
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This is like the stress doctor, okay?
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She s a Harvard physician, a nationally recognized stress expert.
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She s a lecturer at Harvard Medical School in the Division of Global Health and Social Medicine.
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Her work has been featured everywhere.
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We re talking about Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Oprah Magazine, Architectural Digest, Elle Magazine.
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Like, she s a rock star, okay?
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She s also the author of The Five Resets, Rewire Your Brain and Body for Less Stress and More Resilience.
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I think what s really special about her is that she is very aware of modern stressors.
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She s very aware of
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the way that modern technology meets our biological caveman brains to create a high-stress world today.
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Her focus is truly helping people and making people less stressed, not, well,
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If you start a successful startup and you make billions of dollars, then you won t be stressed because you ll be on a yacht.
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I think that her approach is
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incredibly reasonable, incredibly doable.
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And I feel like she speaks to me in a way that I can understand so that I can apply the things that she discusses into my life so that I can slay harder.
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Because isn t that what it s all about?
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Just finding ways to slay a little bit harder?
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That s what it s all about.
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Without further ado, let me present to you
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Dr. Aditi Nehrukar.
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Here she is.
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Well, let s start out with what made you want to get into healthcare and stress as a topic.
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Are you a stressed out person?
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Is that what drew you to this?
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Or through your studies, did you realize, oh God, this is a huge issue?
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You know, I became an expert and a doctor with an expertise in stress because I was a stress patient looking for answers.
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I was a medical resident.
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I was in my second year of medical training working 80 hours a week, seeing death and dying on a daily basis.
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And I had a very sort of light bulb moment I was in the cardiac ICU rounding on my patients I had just worked a 30 hour shift, and I was seeing a patient and then I had palpitations in my chest it felt like a stampede of wild horses in the middle of.
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work day.
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So I like sat down, my nurse who I d been working with for a long time came over and gave me some orange juice and we laughed it off because it lasted a few seconds and it went away.
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She noticed right away that something was wrong.
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And that is when she was like, oh, it s probably nothing.
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probably just have a little, you know, it s low blood sugar.
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And I said, yeah, I didn t sleep well last night.
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None of us, right?
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You re working 80 hours a week.
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It s a 30 hour shift.
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Yep.
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So then that was sort of my awakening.
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I went home and every night for two to three weeks straight, it would never happen during the day.
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And as I was going to bed, I would get the stampede of wild horses across my chest.
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And it was terrifying, Emma, because I ve never experienced anything like that.
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nor now.
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It s been 25 years and that was like my only experience of that debilitating stress.
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And I went to see a doctor because what are you going to do if you re feeling this way?
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And the doctor did the million dollar workup, did my blood tests and heart ultrasound and EKG and everything and told me you re fine.
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Everything s good.
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It s just stress.
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Don t worry.
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Big smile.
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Just try to relax.
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We ve all been there in medical training.
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And so I was like, OK, what does it mean to relax?
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Just try to relax.
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So I did what everyone does.
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Like, what do you do when someone says, just try to relax?
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I watched movies, spent time with my friends.
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I went shopping.
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I had a spa day, hung out with my family, went to good dinners.
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Nothing helped.
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It kept happening over and over.
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And that s when I kind of put my scientist hat on.
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I said, hang on, stress.
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My first reaction was actually stress doesn t happen to people like me.
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You know, we can talk about that, like this idea of like stress.
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Yeah, it s like I m resilient.
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I m not getting stressed.
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I m not getting stressed.
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I m a doctor in training.
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And I had been taught at a very young age
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You, it was like my, I don t know, second month of medical school, and I was sitting in an auditorium.
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To this day, I ll never forget it.
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And the person who said it, he was a professor.
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He sat us all down and he said, you are going through something that very few people in the world have ever experienced.
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You re going to be a physician.
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And in that process, just remember, pressure makes diamonds.
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So when you re going through a process working 80 hours a week and you re like, pressure makes diamonds, I m a diamond in the making.
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So then my diamond cracked.
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And then I had to address it.
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And so that s sort of my origin story, my villain origin story.
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story of how I became a doctor with an expertise in stress because I was looking for answers, didn t find them.
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Just try to relax wasn t enough because what does that even mean?
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It didn t really help.
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And then when I put my scientist hat on, I started doing all of the research of what is stress?
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How does it impact your brain and your body?
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And how can you get out of that mode?
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I found my way out of the dark tunnel of stress.
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Well, I feel like the first step to understanding something is actually knowing what it is.
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And I feel like everybody throws the word stress around constantly.
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I mean, what an overused word.
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You know, we re always talking like, oh, I m stressed.
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I m like, oh, she s stressed.
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That s why she s doing that.
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But and people get angry at me at times because I love defining things in the most simple terms, but it s so helpful.
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What is stress?
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in its simple terms?
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I love this question.
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And you re right.
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We say we re always like, oh, I m so stressed.
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Oh, you re so stressed.
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This week is going to be so stressful.
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What does that mean?
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There are actually two kinds of stress and not all stress is created equal.
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So there s healthy stress, good stress in scientific terms.
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I won t get too scientific, but
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It s called adaptive stress.
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Adaptive stress is things like rooting for your favorite sports team, getting a promotion, getting a new job, your hosting gig at the Met Ball.
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Healthy, positive stress.
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It moves your life forward.
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Maybe buying a house or graduating from school or getting a new dog or a pet or having a new baby.
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All of these things are versions of positive, healthy stress.
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It is biologically impossible to live a life with zero stress, and that is not the goal.
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The goal is to live a life with healthy, manageable stress.
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Now, when the other kind of stress is unhealthy stress, in scientific terms, it s maladaptive stress.
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Maladaptive stress is what you and I, when we hear the word stress or in pop culture,
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That is maladaptive stress.
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It s dysfunctional, unproductive, and harmful to your brain and your body.
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So all of the ways that we can feel stress, there s mental manifestations, there s physical manifestations, and the goal is to really transform that unhealthy stress, bring it back to balance to healthy, manageable stress so it can move your life forward and it can serve you rather than harm you.
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So those are really the key differences.
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Why, on like an evolutionary level, why do humans get stressed?
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We developed the ability to get stressed because it is a protective mechanism.
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It s a way for us to feel safe.
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When we were all cave people living together in tribes,
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are we would go out foraging for food, let s say, and you see a tiger in the forest.
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Your fight or flight response is activated.
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That is your stress response.
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It s governed by a piece of your brain.
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It s called the amygdala.
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It s a small almond-shaped structure deep in your brain.
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And the amygdala is what drives your stress response forward.
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When you see a tiger in a forest, you can either fight or you can flee.
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That s why we call it the fight or flight response.
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Your heart starts racing so that it pumps oxygen and blood throughout your muscles.
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Your lungs breathe quickly.
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You start having rapid, shallow breathing.
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That s what anxious breathing is.
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It s stressful breathing to get more oxygen.
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Your blood is shunted away from vital organs and to muscles so you can either fight or flee.
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Your pupils dilate.
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So it s a real biological response that s happening in the body when you have the fight or flight response.
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And it is a way to keep you safe.
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Now, after those times when people were cave dwellers, there would be a moment of respite.
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The tiger, you would either flee or fight.
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And then you would bring yourself back to equilibrium.
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The challenge with modern day stress is that amygdala is always in the background.
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Your fight or flight response is always in the background.
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Because all of these tigers, we re not fighting tigers in the forest.
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All of our tigers now are metaphorical tigers that never seem to go.
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go away.
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Relationship problems, financial troubles, health issues, climate anxiety, so many things that just are on always in the background.
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And therefore your amygdala is always on in the background.
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And so it s a part of our mechanism.
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So when you are feeling that chronic sense of stress, it s not you, it s your biology.
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In fact, your brain and your body are experts.
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designed to handle short bursts of acute stress.
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It s when it becomes chronic that it becomes a problem, and that s when burnout can set in, and all of the health problems.
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So a little bit of healthy stress is okay.
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Keeps you safe, protected.
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That amygdala, it is about survival and self-preservation.
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That is the only role of the amygdala.
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Do you think cave people had that sort of maladaptive stress, like that non-helpful stress, or do you think that s new?
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I am not an evolutionary biologist, but what is interesting is if you think about the onslaughts, it s kind of the same rationale as when people say, young people, they can t really handle stress like the old people used to, right?
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We hear that all the time.
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You guys aren t as hardy or as resilient as we used to be.
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And I always argue to say that the onslaughts that young people are facing with technology, with financial struggles or all of these things, it s ongoing.
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It s different than the onslaughts that the older generation was facing in the same way.
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Evolutionarily speaking, of course there was, you know, there was fear of famine or home issues with cave dwellers, but it likely wasn t something that was 24-7.
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Again, I m not an evolutionary biologist, but it just seems to me that now the modern day stressors are ongoing, continuous, and they never seem to go away.
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The other thing to kind of think about is, I use this analogy in my book, The Five Resets, about this night watchman.
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When you think about yourself, so the amygdala is always in overdrive when you re feeling stressed.
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And evolutionarily speaking, when the tribe would sleep, there was a night watchman who would scan for danger so the tribe could rest.
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Now we are all our own night watchman because we are all feeling a sense of hyper-vigilance and a heightened sense of fear and we re nervous about our own survival and self-preservation.
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And so we scroll.
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And so how do we do that?
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We scroll on social media or we scroll reading headlines or news and all of these ways.
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So in many ways, we are creating our own stress because we are just feeling that sense of constant danger and we re looking around and scanning the environment at all times.
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Back during cave dweller days, there might have been one person who was assigned and designated for that.
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Now, the way our modern world is working, it s just really different.
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And we re all doing that all the time.
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Hence that amygdala always on in the background.
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That s probably why it s so addicting to read
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The news to, you know, scroll on social media and find all the stuff that makes us feel bad is because we re programmed to find that to protect ourselves.
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Now it s everywhere and it s so readily available.
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And what s funny about it is that
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Technically, we can survive without it.
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Before, we needed to look out.
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We needed to protect ourselves from these bad things, from bad news.
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Whereas now, it s like, technically, we don t have to look at all that.
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But it s a moral dilemma that I don t want to get into, but it s like, that s very fascinating.
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It s like we re bearing the weight of the entire world s
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stress on our own back all the time.
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All day, every day.
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I hear a lot like, well, it s our responsibility as human beings to be aware of what s going on.
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And that s a huge ask of humanity.
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Can we handle that?
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It s a beautiful question.
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You know, I would say that it s really important to be an informed citizen.
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Agreed.
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I work in journalism.
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My two loves are medicine and journalism, and I deeply believe that it s our responsibility to know what is happening in the world and to be informed as citizens so that we can act in positive, productive ways, whether it means donating, whether it means
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Calling out certain causes and amplifying things.
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So this is not about censorship We want to make sure that people are engaged and you know, yes Unfortunately, you can t do that at all times 24-7 it you cannot do that at the expense of your mental health and so it s about preserving and protecting your mental health so that you can be the amplifier of
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and the engaged, informed citizen that you want to be about causes that you believe in.
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And so there s like a balance.
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It s about striking a balance and knowing when is your stress something that you can harness for good versus it becoming, you know, like Spider-Man, it s a blessing or a curse.
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Same kind of thing.
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It s like, when is your stress something that can be used for good to improve humanity versus something that is going to be a curse on yourself, right?
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I mean, this is not about anyone bigger than you.
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It s like, when is your stress going to get so out of hand with you engaging in news?
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Because studies show that when you are engaged with graphic content, whether it be
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videos or if you re reading lots of things, there s lots of humanitarian crises in the world.
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And as you are engaging and consuming that information, you yourself, without actually having been in that conflict area, you are thousands of miles away, you can be impacted firsthand and develop signs of PTSD, which was a shocking finding in the research done by a researcher here in California, in fact.
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And she found, her group found, Dr. Silver,
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Roxanne Silver, she found that people who consumed graphic images and content of things happening thousands of miles away increased their personal risk of PTSD and their risk of health conditions years later.
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So when you are consuming the news or headlines or social media or all of these things, first it s important to recognize that it s not your fault.
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It s your primal urge to scroll.
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When you feel stressed, that amygdala is fired.
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You re scanning for danger.
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You are your own night watchman.
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And clickbait works on the biology of stress, right?
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You start feeling stressed, you feel hypervigilant, so then you scroll some more.
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And then that increases.
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It s a feedback loop.
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And then it increases your sense of hypervigilance, so you keep scrolling and scrolling and scrolling.
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So you find yourself coming down this rabbit hole.
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But what s fascinating is that this scrolling is not benign.
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It s not like, oh, I can just shut it off.
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It s hard to shut off.
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But this idea that you cannot, it has to be all or nothing, right?
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You can still be an informed citizen, consume the news, do it in a way that feels responsible and good for you.
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Do it in a way that makes you take action on issues that matter without compromising your mental health.
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And that is the fine line.
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It s hard because it s a slippery slope.
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And as you consume, you want to consume more and more and more.
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And so you can do various things to reset your stress.
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The key is to create digital boundaries because we have boundaries in every relationship in our life.
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We have boundaries with ourselves, with our partners, our children, our coworkers, our family members.
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Why don t we have a boundary when it comes to the relationship that we have with our devices?
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It s almost like that boundary is like a boundary with yourself.
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And I think that s the hardest boundary, like boundaries that you create with yourself.
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They re so hard to uphold because you are the checks and balances.
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I know I have moments where I feel like I have two sides of my brain fighting each other.
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I have this, it is like a devil and an angel.
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I ve always felt like I have that in a way.
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And that s a hard thing to manage, but it is worth it.
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It s so worth it.
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To sort of further demonstrate why it s so worth it,
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Explain to me how stress impacts a human s well-being.
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I mean, how does stress  presence in someone s body impact their well-being on a day-to-day?
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The thing with stress that is so difficult is, first, let me just paint the picture of the data.
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70% of people across industry, regardless of industry, regardless of what job that you have,
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70% of people, regardless of industry, have at least one feature of stress or burnout right now.
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That s like saying in a room of 30 people, 21 people are struggling with stress and or burnout.
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So if you are feeling any of these things, you are not the exception.
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You are the rule.
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How does stress manifest?
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It is such a personal thing.
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People have mental manifestations of stress and physical manifestations of stress.
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So certain mental manifestations of stress could be anxiety, depression, insomnia, hypervigilance, irritability, quick to anger.
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On the other side of the spectrum, lethargy, fatigue, not motivated, unproductive, or bored.
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There s so many flavors of stress.
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Flavors.
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physical symptoms.
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Some people have no mental manifestations and get physical manifestations of symptoms.
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I m sure you have friends or family members who say, oh, I don t know, my back just feels weird.
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Or you get neck pain, or shoulder pain, or abdominal pain, dizziness, nausea, tingling, numbness, headaches.
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There are so many kinds of physical manifestations of stress.
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The key is first, of
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Of course, if you are feeling any of these things, to go see your doctor, because that s always important.
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As a doctor, I always have to say that to get the full workup, like I did when I was having the palpitations.
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I went to a doctor and I said, the stampede of wild horses, is it something to be worried about?
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Is it my heart?
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Or is it something, you know, what is it?
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So once your doctor does the whole workup of whatever symptom you have,
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Then they tell you it s probably just stress.
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Everything checks out okay, it s stress.
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Stress in medical terms is a diagnosis of exclusion, meaning we have ruled out everything else and then we say it s probably your stress.
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One statistic, which is really the genesis of why I decided to do the work that I do.
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is because one study back in the 1980s found that 60% to 80% of all primary care visits with doctors had a stress-related component.
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That means that someone has abdominal pain or headaches or something, and they go to see their doctor, they do the full workup, and they re like, it s nothing.
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It s just stress.
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So that happens 60% to 80% of times.
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It s not to say stress causes these symptoms, but stress makes things worse.
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And yet, only 3% of doctors counsel their patients for stress.
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A lot of that is because doctors were 20 for them to really do their job.
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Well, a doctor has to work 27 hours a day.
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He has 27 hours a day right to do that.
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And so there s lots of it s not an individual failing of physicians.
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It s the system that s really broken.
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It s also not the individual feeling of people to say, I don t know what s going on.
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Is this stress?
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Is it not?
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It s really hard to pin down.
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It s like this multi-hyphenate performer.
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You can t pin stress down.
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And stress, typically, with most people, it presents a certain way.
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So, you know, I call it the canary in the coal mine.
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That s an analogy I like to use.
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It s this idea of, historically, coal miners would go down into the mines and they would take a canary, a bird, down with them.
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When the air got bad, the bird would stop singing and the canary would stop singing.
2
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And so they would look around and say, okay, time to go up.
2
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Why didn t they recognize that in themselves?
2
SPEAKER_00
They couldn t recognize that the air was bad because humans historically, we are just bad historians.
2
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We can t tell when something is happening.
2
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So the canary stopping to sing was the first tell.
2
SPEAKER_00
So often
2
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you will notice that there is certain things happen to you when you are feeling stressed before it becomes a major issue.
2
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For me, it s irritability.
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For people, no sleep disturbances.
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You kind of nodded when I said anxiety.
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Some people feel anxious.
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So there s like this tell your own canary of, wait, something s up.
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Something s not right.
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SPEAKER_00
But often, because we re bad historians, we re like, it s fine.
2
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Just keep going.
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SPEAKER_00
No problem.
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Just keep going.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then you get into trouble.
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, it s also like when you re not dying,
2
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It s like, you know what I mean?
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So many people are like, well, I m not dying.
2
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Yeah, I m just going to live with this.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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And I think we sort of gaslight ourselves into believing that.
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We re fine or like everybody s dealing with this, so it s like I m not going to.
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make a fuss about it.
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And I also think a lot of people, again, you know, you made a really interesting point about out of 30 people, 21 are stressed.
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You know, being stressed is the rule.
2
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So, again,
2
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We ve sort of normalized being stressed out, and it s almost like if you re not stressed out, well, are you working hard enough?
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SPEAKER_01
Are you even getting your job?
2
SPEAKER_01
Well, you re lazy.
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SPEAKER_01
If you re not stressed out, you re lazy.
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SPEAKER_01
We kind of live in that sort of time, which is
2
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Horrific.
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It s a manifestation of hustle culture.
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It s this idea of toxic resilience.
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So when I was seeing my doctor and that doctor said to me, you re probably stressed.
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My first reaction, like I said to you, was stress.
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Stressful to have little people like me.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like I m resilient because I bought into the resilience myth.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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Which is that resilient people can t get burned out and can t get stressed.
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We know based on data now that is absolutely false, categorically untrue.
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SPEAKER_00
Resilience is protective, but it s not enough to prevent burnout or stress, especially now, right?
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SPEAKER_00
21 people out of 30 are facing some form of stress or burnout.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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It s this idea of hustle culture.
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SPEAKER_00
We, when you hear the word resilience now, Emma, you and I and everyone else, we bristle.
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We re like, oh, that word, like it s just has a bad connotation.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
Whereas true, because we ve kind of made it into toxic resilience.
2
SPEAKER_00
You know, in 2018, 2019, you heard the word resilience, and it was a positive word because it was true resilience.
2
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In scientific terms, resilience is your ability to adapt, recover, and grow in the face of life s challenges.
2
SPEAKER_00
Without a little bit of healthy stress, there can be no resilience.
2
SPEAKER_00
You need a little bit of stress for resilience to show itself.
2
SPEAKER_00
Now, over the past like four to five years, that has morphed and it s no longer true resilience.
2
SPEAKER_00
When you hear the word resilience, it is toxic resilience.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s a manifestation of hustle culture and corporations.
2
SPEAKER_00
How much messaging did we get in our workplaces?
2
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Just power through.
2
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You can take on this deadline.
2
SPEAKER_00
You re resilient.
2
SPEAKER_00
Over the past several years, right, we ve all lived through
2
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individual and collective trauma and stress through global events that have occurred over the past four to five years.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so now that word has taken on a sinister and dark meaning because it is no longer this positive, uplifting thing.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so when you say that, you know, it s about
2
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People just feel like, oh, this is what s going to happen.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like, I m stressed.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m burnt out.
2
SPEAKER_00
We cannot let this way of being, which is feeling a sense of maladaptive stress and it being dysfunctional, it can t be a badge of honor anymore.
2
SPEAKER_00
We have to change the script and debunk this idea of toxic resilience and really stand in our true resilience, which, by the way, true resilience honors your human limitations.
2
SPEAKER_00
It honors your boundaries, your human boundaries to say no.
2
SPEAKER_00
It celebrates saying no.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it leans into this idea of self-compassion.
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And we need a lot of grace and self-compassion now more than ever.
2
SPEAKER_01
It should be that the more privileged you are in your life, you know, the more comfortable that your life is, the less stressed that you are.
2
SPEAKER_01
It seems humans are, they wanna find stress.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s almost like we re hungry for it.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so even when somebody, this isn t across the board, but it s like I ve just noticed a lot of unnecessary stress in the lives of people who really, they shouldn t be stressed at all on paper.
2
SPEAKER_00
So there are two kinds of happiness.
2
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And this gets to that idea.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I would say that because I have worked in clinical medicine and I ve seen so many patients from so many walks of life, stress is really the great equalizer that no matter how much money you have or what job you have or whether you have a roof over your head or not or whether you have food in your fridge or pantry or not, stress is really the great equalizer and it s part of the human condition.
2
SPEAKER_00
So yes, I think that stress across the board, people feel a lot of stress.
2
SPEAKER_00
What you re speaking about is, you know, so someone has this beautiful home and many cars and all of these degrees and can buy anything, and yet how can they feel a sense of stress, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
It s this idea of hedonic happiness and the different kinds of happiness.
2
SPEAKER_00
So it s about humans being meaning-seeking, purpose-driven creatures.
2
SPEAKER_00
And when you chase hedonic happiness, and it s something that is really perpetuated in our society, especially in the modern age, but always,
2
SPEAKER_00
You chase, you know, the fancy restaurants and trips and yachts and private planes and beautiful homes and nice bags and all of these things, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
These are all manifestations of hedonic happiness.
2
SPEAKER_00
And there is something in your brain called the hedonic treadmill.
2
SPEAKER_00
which is that we all have a set point of hedonic happiness.
2
SPEAKER_00
So you can, this is why lottery winners, they win the lottery and you think, okay, they re not going to have any stress and they re going to be happy forever.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then you kind of get back to your baseline level.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yes, yes.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it s, it s, and you know, you buy this, I don t know, maybe you run into a ton of money and buy a $20 million home and you think that s it.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m going to solve all of my problems.
2
SPEAKER_00
and you end up not solving all of your problems and you end up feeling stressed because we have a hedonic treadmill.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s not to say that if you don t have the means, we know that people who don t have financial means and who are impoverished do have more stress just because you are working on, you re focusing on survival and self-preservation, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
But it s this hedonic treadmill that we hit a set point.
2
SPEAKER_00
So what is the antidote to that?
2
SPEAKER_00
It s about another kind of happiness.
2
SPEAKER_00
So it s eudaimonic happiness.
2
SPEAKER_00
And eudaimonic happiness is about contentment, meaning, purpose.
2
SPEAKER_00
So for you, Emma, you re engaged in all of these pursuits and that brings you deep meaning, fulfillment, and joy.
2
SPEAKER_00
A different kind of happiness than if you were hanging out with your friends and taking a fabulous trip to, I don t know, Italy.
2
SPEAKER_00
Wonderful, magical, but a different kind of happiness.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so it s about a marriage of the two and really focusing.
2
SPEAKER_00
We focus so much on hedonic happiness, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
That s what you were describing, that lifestyle.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it s about, yes, of course we want hedonic happiness, but we also want to manage our stress by creating some eudaimonic happiness.
2
SPEAKER_00
And the fascinating thing about these two different kinds of happiness is that our bodies know the difference.
2
SPEAKER_00
There has been science done which our cells showed these different kinds of happiness affect our cells in a
3
SPEAKER_00
different way.
3
SPEAKER_00
Decreased inflammation, all of these fascinating things.
3
SPEAKER_00
And your body knows the difference between these two kinds of happiness.
3
SPEAKER_01
Maybe it s because when you re only focused on hedonic happiness, then it s so short lived that you re always looking for another hit of it.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s right.
3
SPEAKER_01
And trying to get another hit of it is stressful because it s like you start to become numb to things like going to your favorite restaurant doesn t mean anything anymore.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like it s almost too easy to only find your happiness there when it s available and there s no reason to not go in that easy direction.
3
SPEAKER_01
You can then,
3
SPEAKER_01
abandon the more challenging direction, which then, yeah, leads you back to your baseline because of lack of discipline, I guess, in a way, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
Like maybe that s what I m, that s, maybe that s what it is in that scenario, like why that happens.
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t know about lack of discipline because then you re putting the onus on yourself and that might not feel, you know, you re not giving yourself enough grace because when you are feeling a sense of stress,
3
SPEAKER_00
you are living in the here and now and you re focused on survival and self-preservation.
3
SPEAKER_00
When you re feeling in that resilient state or the normal state, many people can t even remember what they were like in their normal state right now, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
That area of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, which is an area right behind your forehead,
3
SPEAKER_00
That is that area of the brain that governs all of these things.
3
SPEAKER_00
But if you are living in amygdala stress mode, it s hard to get out of your own way.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s hard to get out of that immediate fight or flight mechanism, survival, self-preservation, protection, and to start thinking about a different way, which is led by the prefrontal.
3
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cortex.
3
SPEAKER_00
So in many ways, if you start kind of, and the other thing that happens with stress is that you start, your inner critic starts to hold a megaphone and say, you re not good enough.
3
SPEAKER_00
You ll never achieve this.
3
SPEAKER_00
Why even try?
3
SPEAKER_00
Stop right now.
3
SPEAKER_00
All of those harmful messages you tell yourself.
3
SPEAKER_00
So if you are feeling that sense of stress or burnout, as we know, most people are, 70% of people feel that way, saying to yourself that you need more discipline.
3
SPEAKER_00
You need to do better.
3
SPEAKER_00
You need to, you know,
3
SPEAKER_00
change your way your happiness in a good in the in a fulfilling yeah yeah that s true instead instead just give yourself lots of grace have a lens of self-compassion and start small you don t have to think about eudaimonic happiness like what makes me happy and what fulfills me and what s my purpose get out of your head and into your body go for a five minute walk every single day commit to that
3
SPEAKER_00
Commit to some digital boundaries.
3
SPEAKER_00
Commit to protecting your sleep like the vital resource it is.
3
SPEAKER_00
Fill your tank.
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SPEAKER_00
So many of us are running on fumes, and it s hard to think about these big, grandiose things like purpose and meaning when you re just trying to get through the day.
3
SPEAKER_00
You can t.
3
SPEAKER_00
You can t.
3
SPEAKER_00
You biologically can t, in fact.
3
SPEAKER_01
No, you definitely can t.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s a different part of your brain.
3
SPEAKER_01
You can t be even remotely philosophical when you re in a state of burnout or when you re in a state of stress because that takes this almost impossible nowadays sort of balance in your brain to be able to focus
3
SPEAKER_01
on that level, like it s just, and I think it s a shame because I think so many people want to tap into that side of themselves and they can t because we re all so stressed out.
3
SPEAKER_00
You know, it s interesting because in 2024, you might think, oh, I got through this like horrible thing.
3
SPEAKER_00
I should be feeling amazing.
3
SPEAKER_00
Most people are feeling worse now than they did in 2020.
3
SPEAKER_00
Oh, for sure.
3
SPEAKER_00
And it s the delayed stress reaction.
3
SPEAKER_00
And everyone is wondering, why?
3
SPEAKER_00
Why do I feel worse now?
3
SPEAKER_00
I should be celebrating, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
And that is because that is not how your brain works.
3
SPEAKER_00
Your brain is built like a dam.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so during difficult moments, like what we ve all lived through, we shore up our internal reserves and we keep it together at all costs.
3
SPEAKER_00
Think about your life, Emma, to periods of time that have been really difficult periods of time.
3
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Chances are, many of us, you keep it together.
3
SPEAKER_00
Of course, there are people who break down and you have moments.
3
SPEAKER_00
But you keep it together.
3
SPEAKER_00
You shore up your internal reserves.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then once the acute crisis passes, I ve seen this with my cancer patients over and over.
3
SPEAKER_00
They come to see me on the day of diagnosis.
3
SPEAKER_00
They go through their treatment.
3
SPEAKER_00
They don t shed a tear.
3
SPEAKER_00
When they get that clean bill of health, their oncologist says, congrats, your cancer is cured.
3
SPEAKER_00
They re in my office the next day weeping.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s the same thing that would happen to me.
3
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I would see patients, and I was seeing so many patients in the clinic, never had palpitations.
3
SPEAKER_00
Totally fine.
3
SPEAKER_00
At night, going to bed, finally relaxed.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s when the palpitations came.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so now all of us collectively
3
SPEAKER_00
have come out of a really difficult time.
3
SPEAKER_00
We are finally feeling psychologically safe.
3
SPEAKER_00
Our defenses are down now.
3
SPEAKER_00
They weren t down in 2020, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
We were very keyed up.
3
SPEAKER_00
We re all feeling more relaxed and calm.
3
SPEAKER_00
We re not feeling a sense of imminent threat or danger.
3
SPEAKER_00
Our true emotions are emerging, and it s a deluge.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so that is why our dams, collectively, individually, have broken.
3
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
3
SPEAKER_00
And it s all coming out now.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, my anxiety has been so bad over the last year.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it feels like it s all coming out now.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like, this is so resonating with me.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it does feel like almost... It feels like a direct response to that.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like, I can feel that connection.
3
SPEAKER_01
I feel those strings there.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so it s so interesting.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I feel like we all... We really all kind of just let it pass, and then now we re like, oh, we re all back to normal now.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I think a lot of people feel really off.
3
SPEAKER_00
It really freaked out.
3
SPEAKER_00
Because we haven t processed what we ve gone through.
3
SPEAKER_00
Your brain and body are not designed to sustain this level, this cyclical level of trauma, onslaught, grief.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it s just going on and on and on.
3
SPEAKER_00
And there is no respite.
3
SPEAKER_00
Your brain and your body can handle short bursts of stress as long as your brain and body come back into equilibrium.
3
SPEAKER_00
But we ve had no equilibrium.
3
SPEAKER_00
We ve had no recovery time.
3
SPEAKER_00
And like a muscle, your brain is a muscle.
3
SPEAKER_00
So with your biceps, you go to the gym and you work out.
3
SPEAKER_00
Then you give yourself a rest day with arms, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
And you might do legs or whatever it is.
3
SPEAKER_00
You give yourself that rest day.
3
SPEAKER_00
Your muscle recovers.
3
SPEAKER_00
Then you go back to the gym the next day.
3
SPEAKER_00
or two days later, and then you can work out a little bit more.
3
SPEAKER_00
But if you were lifting heavy weights and doing, I don t know, dumbbell presses every single day for four years straight, how would your biceps be reacting?
3
SPEAKER_00
Your brain needs a rest.
3
SPEAKER_00
Your brain is a muscle, just like your bicep.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so you need a little bit of rest and recovery to regroup, and then you can come back stronger, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
Something called post-traumatic growth.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s lots of things that can happen, but if you never have that moment of pause or respite, it all has to come out somewhere.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I think a lot of people right now are very confused because like you, Emma, people are feeling anxiety, depression, insomnia, and they re wondering why, because their messaging that we have been told in our society is everything s great now,
3
SPEAKER_00
Back to normal.
3
SPEAKER_00
Oh, we lost a lot of headway, so let s make up for it.
3
SPEAKER_00
Let s work harder.
3
SPEAKER_00
Let s do more.
3
SPEAKER_00
Let s do this.
3
SPEAKER_00
Let s do that.
3
SPEAKER_00
And you re like, wait a second.
3
SPEAKER_00
We didn t even take a beat.
3
SPEAKER_00
Your brain and body certainly didn t.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so that is why you are feeling all of these things now.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s important to know that this is a normal biological process.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s nothing wrong with you if you re feeling worse now than you were in 2020.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s everything right with you.
3
SPEAKER_00
Your brain and body are acting exactly as they should.
3
SPEAKER_00
The only way around is through.
3
SPEAKER_01
You mentioned earlier how when you were going through your moment of stress and you were having the stampede at night in the heart, on the chest, and you tried all these things to make the stress go away and it didn t.
3
SPEAKER_01
Why did those things not work?
3
SPEAKER_01
You know, like, how do you actually target stress and get rid of it?
3
SPEAKER_01
Because you can t just, you know, go have a spa day.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like, that s a Band-Aid.
3
SPEAKER_01
You have to find the root cause and change it?
3
SPEAKER_01
Like, change something about your life?
3
SPEAKER_01
Is that the only cure?
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, what is the ultimate cure for stress?
3
SPEAKER_00
So, you know, I am with you all the way in terms of getting to the root cause and trying to change it.
3
SPEAKER_00
But unfortunately for most of us, we can t change it.
3
SPEAKER_00
These are systemic forces at play.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so whether it be financial constraints or parenting constraints or
3
SPEAKER_00
you know, responsibilities and roles in our lives.
3
SPEAKER_00
We can t just say, hey, I m going to check out, see you later.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m going to Bali for six months.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m going to go on a surf trip or live in Paris for three months.
3
SPEAKER_01
Everyone in L.A.
3
SPEAKER_01
has no problem doing that.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, sign me up for that life plan.
3
SPEAKER_00
I know.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s great.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s amazing.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
But the reality is that ninety nine point nine nine percent of people can t go to Bali for six months and go on a surf trip.
3
SPEAKER_00
So what is this?
3
SPEAKER_00
What is the solution there?
3
SPEAKER_00
The first is to give yourself a lot of compassion and see and understand that if you re feeling like this, and you know, you have to parent yourself.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s the first sort of approach.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I m a mom, and I have lots of rules for about bedtime.
3
SPEAKER_00
and screen time and all of these things.
3
SPEAKER_00
You did too as a child.
3
SPEAKER_00
We know how that works in society.
3
SPEAKER_00
We set limits and boundaries for our children.
3
SPEAKER_00
They have a certain bedtime.
3
SPEAKER_00
They have a certain time to go outside and play and move their bodies.
3
SPEAKER_00
You have certain nutritional guidelines, screen time.
3
SPEAKER_00
Why don t we do that for ourselves?
3
SPEAKER_00
Why don t we learn to parent ourselves?
3
SPEAKER_00
It is challenging, but it can be done.
4
SPEAKER_00
So that s the first reframe.
4
SPEAKER_00
It doesn t have to be about morality or right from wrong.
4
SPEAKER_00
It can simply be, I m going to learn to parent myself better.
4
SPEAKER_00
So knowing what your boundaries are and when you ve exceeded them, rather than being like the coal miner and just powering through, understanding like, hey, wait a second, my canary stopped singing.
4
SPEAKER_00
I need to, you know, I need to get out of this mine.
4
SPEAKER_00
The air is bad.
4
SPEAKER_00
So understanding what that is, it s not about a large systemic change.
4
SPEAKER_00
I would love a large systemic change, but when are we, I think we got to wait a long time for that to happen, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
It has to happen in the moment, in today.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it s about building some of ways to manage your stress and reset your stress using your brain and your body and the biology of stress right in the messy middle of your overscheduled life.
4
SPEAKER_00
So one very clear example.
4
SPEAKER_00
Aiming for a 10 o clock bedtime.
4
SPEAKER_00
Embrace your inner grandmother or grandfather and go to bed at 10.
4
SPEAKER_00
In fact, I feel like grandparents stay up much later than young people these days.
4
SPEAKER_00
Because they love Jimmy Kimmel.
4
SPEAKER_01
Because they re living life.
4
SPEAKER_01
They have to stay up for Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon.
4
SPEAKER_01
They love that.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, they re living their best life.
4
SPEAKER_00
My parents are grandparents and they re living their best life.
4
SPEAKER_00
I know.
4
SPEAKER_00
So instead, okay, maybe we use another analogy instead of Greg Barry.
4
SPEAKER_01
Inner baby, maybe, like inner baby.
4
SPEAKER_01
Inner baby, I love it.
4
SPEAKER_01
Because babies love going to bed at night.
4
SPEAKER_01
No, they don t, though.
4
SPEAKER_01
They don t sleep either.
4
SPEAKER_00
Do humans ever go to bed at a reasonable hour?
4
SPEAKER_00
Maybe never.
4
SPEAKER_00
So we should be the first generation that is doing this.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
4
SPEAKER_00
And really engaging and practicing self-care.
4
SPEAKER_00
We use the word self-care and self-love a lot, right?
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We throw that word around.
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Yeah.
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But instead, understanding that there are certain biological mechanisms that your brain and body need
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for rest and recovery and prioritizing rest and recovery, not as a nice to have, not something that will happen when, you know, when my children grow up, when I have less work, when this happens and that happens.
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No, rest and recovery have to happen right here, right now, today.
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And so really protecting that.
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So making sure that you are going to bed at a decent hour, 10 p.m.
4
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is based on data, is shown to be most protective.
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Hours between 10 and midnight are the most restorative for sleep.
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So creating some digital boundaries, getting your phone off your nightstand.
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All of these things have downstream effects because if you re not scrolling, if your phone isn t on your nightstand, you re not scrolling at night, you re going to bed at 10.
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That is a direct competitor with our sleep, our screen time.
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SPEAKER_00
in many ways biologically because that blue light from your screen is keeping you awake at night, it s activating the awake mechanism in your brain, and also psychologically because you re consuming lots of difficult things and then continuing to scroll because your stress response is high.
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SPEAKER_00
Also, when you keep your phone off your nightstand in the morning, 50% of people first thing on waking, whether they ve had a restful night or not, will scroll their phones.
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It is just
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habit.
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Yeah.
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I think that s underreported.
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I think it s probably higher than more.
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SPEAKER_00
It s probably definitely higher than 70, 80 percent.
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SPEAKER_00
Right.
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Instead, when you keep it off your nightstand, you create a geographical boundary, which means that you wake up, you let your eyes adjust to the light.
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You may be taking a deep breath or two.
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We re not talking about, you know, spending an hour before checking your phone a few minutes.
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That short stopgap can change the tenor of your entire day, moving your body a little.
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We know that when you sit for long periods of time, there s this
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saying, right?
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Sitting is the new smoking.
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And when you sit for long periods of time and you feel that sense of anxiety or depression and you really just feel so heavy in your body, five minutes of a walk.
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Commit to it every day.
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It s easy.
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You can lace up your sneakers.
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That s the hardest part, right?
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Then try for 10 minutes the next day, and then 20 minutes.
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You have to find a way to avoid the all or nothing fallacy and saying, well, if the system isn t going to get fixed, why even bother?
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Instead, when you do these small resets, we re talking five minutes, it can help your biology of stress for your brain and body.
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And science shows that even 10 seconds of a break during the day can have an impact on your brain.
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Totally.
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And there was this beautiful study done with two groups of people and they looked at brain scans.
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It was done by Microsoft.
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And one group had, took no breaks, just worked straight through the day, Zoom meetings and lots of, you know, various things that we all have to manage throughout the day.
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The other group took short 10 minute breaks throughout the day, I think anywhere from four to five.
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The number doesn t really matter, right?
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And at the end of the day, they found that the group that took breaks cumulatively, they looked at brain scans, and found that that group that took breaks had less stress throughout the day.
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At the end of the day, better cognition, attention, focus, and all of these things to preserve the prefrontal cortex.
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The other thing that I would suggest is while we are trying to work on the broader system, but how do you manage your stress in the day-to-day, is to really think about what you are doing during the day.
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So for example, multitasking.
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Multitasking, we all do it all day long.
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And we think like, oh, this is something good for our productivity.
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Multitasking is a scientific misnomer.
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There is no such thing.
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When you are multitasking, what your brain is doing is task switching.
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You re doing two separate tasks in rapid succession.
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Even though 100% of us, Emma, think that we are excellent multitaskers, you might think you are.
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I used to think that I was.
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The truth is only 2% of human brains can effectively multitask.
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And so if you are a true multitasker, likely you are part of that 98% who is task switching.
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So there is no such thing as multitasking.
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It s a myth.
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Instead, the antidote to multitasking, and the thing with multitasking is it weakens your prefrontal cortex.
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It decreases productivity, decreases concentration, memory,
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and ironically decreases productivity.
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SPEAKER_00
Totally.
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SPEAKER_00
So the antidote to multitasking is monotasking.
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And what monotasking means is
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Let s say you have an hour to finish four tasks.
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What is multitasking?
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You have everything going all at once, right?
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Instead, monotasking is kind of like having a dinner party, and if you re cooking four dishes, it s focusing on one thing.
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Do a time block of 10 or 15 minutes.
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Focus on the one task.
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Then take a break.
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Build that science into your life.
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Take a five-minute break.
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Take a 10-second break if you can.
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then focus on the second task, 10 or 15 minutes, then take another break.
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And by the end of the hour, you ve finished all four tasks, you have monotasked, and you have preserved your prefrontal cortex, which is all about solving complex problems.
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And there are so many complex problems in the world we cannot afford to multitask.
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So aim to monotask instead.
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I just did this the other day.
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I was thinking about how much stress
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I experience from picking out an outfit every day.
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You look amazing.
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SPEAKER_01
Thank you.
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This is an example of me being like, I m done.
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I need to snap into a uniform.
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I think I might do that because I calculated how many hours I spend picking out an outfit every day.
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I also weighed the pros and cons.
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Does this make me happy?
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Cause I do enjoy fashion.
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Like I love fashion, but on a day to day basis, constantly making these choices, I was like, this kind of, this kind of has a net negative impact on my life.
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SPEAKER_01
And I was like, I do love it, but I don t think it s working for me.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then I m in this phase right now where I m sort of stepping back and looking at all the things that I do and sort of analyzing
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SPEAKER_01
Are they working for me?
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SPEAKER_01
Because I don t think we do that enough.
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SPEAKER_01
And I think there s a lot of hidden stressors that we don t think about that accumulate.
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SPEAKER_00
I think what you re really bringing forward is this idea that we all have a limited amount of bandwidth.
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SPEAKER_00
Yes.
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SPEAKER_00
And it s not this thing that just grows on trees where, oh, bandwidth.
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You want more bandwidth.
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SPEAKER_00
And that s the problem with toxic resilience, right?
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It s like, you can do more.
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Just do more.
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Just work harder.
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Expand your bandwidth.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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As if we can.
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We can t.
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You can t.
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It s biologically impossible.
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SPEAKER_00
You all, we all have a set amount of bandwidth.
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It might be different for different people based on your personal experience, your circumstances, your resources.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s so many factors that go into bandwidth, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
Like what is bandwidth and how is it that, but to really understand that we all have a finite amount.
4
SPEAKER_00
So when you are spending 20 minutes every day picking out your outfit, there s lots of people, by the way, I think Steve Jobs, you mentioned Apple.
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SPEAKER_00
I think he was one of them.
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SPEAKER_00
Einstein may have been another.
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Full uniform.
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SPEAKER_00
Like Einstein had white shirts and gray pants and Steve Jobs had black turtleneck and jeans.
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SPEAKER_00
Yes.
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Just an entire wardrobe.
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And then it was like one less decision to make because ultimately what happens is when you are, you have to take into account decision fatigue.
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SPEAKER_00
Because if you are constantly making many decisions all day, every day, it s a way to streamline.
4
SPEAKER_00
So I think for you when you re saying, you know, you love fashion, of course, when you re going to the med ball, of course, you re going to be thinking about fashion.
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SPEAKER_00
Yes.
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And planning your outfits or you have a big event.
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SPEAKER_00
But in the day to day, you re like, does it make sense?
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But what I would actually say to you is hearing you say that you re thinking about this, you re thinking about the different areas of your life.
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That, to me, tells me that you are not feeling a sense of acute stress, that you are very much living in that thriving mode in the prefrontal cortex because you are forward thinking, strategizing, planning.
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So congratulations for that.
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Thank you.
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See, because I don t actually think I m very stressed right now.
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I think you ve really stepped into that idea of, you know, meaning, purpose, mission.
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And then you have all of these ideas of to be able to do all of those things out there.
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SPEAKER_01
What do I need to do in my day-to-day to streamline?
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But to get there, it s taken you years.
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Oh, it s been the most turbulent journey.
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There is a sense of relief, though, when you do figure out, OK, what am I trying to do?
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You know, where can I provide value to the world in some way?
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It doesn t need to be huge.
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It can be for five people.
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It doesn t matter.
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But, you know, what is that?
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But see, that s what s so hard about
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the period before you discover maybe what your purpose is.
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You spread yourself so thin because you re just throwing everything at the wall like what s going to stick.
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It s interesting because that s making me realize how not having a clear goal in life
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can cause a lot of stress.
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Like in moments of my life where I ve been aimless, that s when I ve been the most stressed.
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SPEAKER_00
That s when I ve been the most overwhelmed because I don t know where to direct my energy.
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SPEAKER_00
I feel all like sprawled out all over the place.
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SPEAKER_00
And I mean, have you noticed that having a distinct goal or, it doesn t even need to be big, it can be,
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I wanna have a, let s say you re pregnant, I wanna have a healthy pregnancy, you know what I mean?
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And that is a big goal, but you know what I m saying.
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It s not.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, very tangible and concrete.
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SPEAKER_00
Yes, like the first step.
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SPEAKER_00
Do you think that helps?
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SPEAKER_01
Of course, it helps.
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It s the first step.
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I call it the MOST goal.
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It s having a MOST goal.
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It s your North Star.
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It s your why.
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Why do you want to have less stress so I can achieve X, Y, and Z?
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SPEAKER_01
Your MOST goal.
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SPEAKER_01
M-O-S-T, it s an acronym, so it stands for, is it motivating?
5
SPEAKER_01
Is the goal motivating?
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SPEAKER_01
Is it objective?
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SPEAKER_01
Like you said, is it something small or is it like, I just want to have, I want to make a big impact on humanity?
5
SPEAKER_01
That s not a MOST goal.
5
SPEAKER_01
That s like so vague and nebulous.
5
SPEAKER_01
I want to have enough energy by this summer so I can play baseball with my grandson.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
5
SPEAKER_01
That is a MOST goal.
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SPEAKER_01
Or MOST, M-O-S-T, M stands for motivating, O is for objective, S is for small, and T is for timely.
5
SPEAKER_01
Can you achieve these things in the next three months?
5
SPEAKER_01
It takes eight weeks to build a habit.
5
SPEAKER_01
Understanding that your brain and your body, when you re having a new habit and you fall off, getting back on, falling off, getting back on, that is part of habit formation.
5
SPEAKER_01
It doesn t mean that you failed.
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SPEAKER_01
It just means that s how your brain is learning and growing and changing.
5
SPEAKER_01
And so when you have a most goal and have a why, then everything becomes more clear, right?
5
SPEAKER_01
Because then you have an aim.
5
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
5
SPEAKER_01
So for you, if your most goal, you, you know, if we want to use the analogy of the example of you don t want to pick out your clothes anymore.
5
SPEAKER_01
Why?
5
SPEAKER_01
Because then you don t, you want to be on time and you want less stress.
5
SPEAKER_01
Why?
5
SPEAKER_01
Because ultimately you re trying to achieve something very concrete in the next three months.
5
SPEAKER_01
yeah for your work whatever it may be you want to have that bandwidth because we all have a limited amount of bandwidth instead of dispersing it on these day-to-day actions that cause you a lot of stress you want to hone it and focus on what matters most yep and so it s less about what s the matter with me when you re feeling a sense of stress how often do we say because of that inner critic what s the matter with me
5
SPEAKER_01
Why do I feel so bad?
5
SPEAKER_01
What is the matter with me?
5
SPEAKER_01
Instead, we need to reframe and it s not about what s the matter with me, it s what matters to me most.
5
SPEAKER_01
And really move things forward using that lens.
5
SPEAKER_00
What is your advice for
5
SPEAKER_00
figuring out what your goal is.
5
SPEAKER_00
Cause I really do think that that is so helpful.
5
SPEAKER_00
There s just something about having that goal that it makes everything else so much easier to analyze in a way.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like you re able to properly, rationally make decisions about your day to day life when you have that goal.
5
SPEAKER_00
But I wonder if there is any advice you give to somebody who s like, you know, I m so stressed out.
5
SPEAKER_00
probably partially as a result of not knowing what I m aiming for.
5
SPEAKER_00
What would your advice be to a person like that?
5
SPEAKER_01
So it depends.
5
SPEAKER_01
So for someone who s saying, I m so stressed out, I hate my job.
5
SPEAKER_01
I want a new job.
5
SPEAKER_01
So in three months, that goal could be, I want to get a new job.
5
SPEAKER_01
But to actually get there and get that new job requires a couple of things.
5
SPEAKER_01
So that s your most goal.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s motivating, it s objective, it s small, and it s timely.
5
SPEAKER_01
So let s say in three months, I want a new job.
5
SPEAKER_01
If you say that to yourself, then what has to happen?
5
SPEAKER_01
You create a backwards plan.
5
SPEAKER_01
So you end up with having a new job, but there are, I don t know, 10 or 15 steps prior to getting there, which include protecting your mental health, managing your stress, filling up your tank and having enough bandwidth to then go search for a job, right?
5
SPEAKER_01
If you re miserable at your current job, you re running on fumes, you re coming home, you re exhausted every night, you re watching Netflix, you re maybe drinking wine and self-medicating
5
SPEAKER_01
you know, three or four drinks and you re up till one or two in the morning, doom scrolling, go to bed, wake up, feel terrible, go to work, you re dissatisfied with work.
5
SPEAKER_01
So if you are in that hamster wheel, you need to figure out a way to break the cycle on a daily basis so that maybe you start going to bed early.
5
SPEAKER_01
Maybe you don t doom scroll, maybe you create a digital boundary so you re not doom scrolling.
5
SPEAKER_01
So then you start getting, you know, you start rewiring your brain through these things.
5
SPEAKER_01
And then your stress starts decreasing.
5
SPEAKER_01
Your stress starts decreasing, you get out of amygdala mode and fight or flight mode.
5
SPEAKER_01
You start having your prefrontal cortex take over again.
5
SPEAKER_01
When your prefrontal cortex takes over, it s about forward thinking, strategy, memory, planning, organization.
5
SPEAKER_01
Then you might start your job search.
5
SPEAKER_01
You have a little bit more energy.
5
SPEAKER_01
You start cleaning up your resume.
5
SPEAKER_01
putting out feelers.
5
SPEAKER_01
So all of these things take time.
5
SPEAKER_01
And so you need to make sure that you are well enough mentally and physically to then engage in that.
5
SPEAKER_01
And then the other thing I will say is when you are doing anything new, understand that anything new is a stressor on your brain.
5
SPEAKER_01
Change, even positive change.
5
SPEAKER_01
is a stress to your brain.
5
SPEAKER_01
That is why when you re starting, you know, it s a new year and you have like 20 things for your New Year s resolutions, by February you ve given them all up because it s just too difficult to sustain.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s not you, it s your biology.
5
SPEAKER_01
So aim to do two things at a time.
5
SPEAKER_01
I call it the resilience rule of two.
5
SPEAKER_01
And do those two things and then build on that.
5
SPEAKER_01
So for eight weeks, do these two new habits of going to bed early every night, keeping your phone off your nightstand,
5
SPEAKER_01
Then, you know, after that, those eight weeks, that habit has become part of your wiring, then start doing a daily walk if you can and start doing something, you know, stop multitasking.
5
SPEAKER_01
Then once that has happened, then you add two new things.
5
SPEAKER_01
So by the end of that three months, you have brought all of these things in, you ve protected your brain, moved out of amygdala mode, which is about survival and self-preservation, like in the here and now.
5
SPEAKER_01
So you can t look for a job three months from now if you re just thinking about the now.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
So it s about shifting your perspective and getting out of one mode to the other.
5
SPEAKER_01
So that s just one very concrete example that I think many people can relate to because there is such a sense of feeling dissatisfied with your work, right?
5
SPEAKER_01
People are not happy in their work.
5
SPEAKER_01
They want to get out of their job.
5
SPEAKER_01
They don t know how.
5
SPEAKER_01
because they don t have the bandwidth right now.
5
SPEAKER_01
So if you can create, it s not about creating bandwidth, exactly like you said, Emma, it s about redirecting and harnessing that bandwidth away from all of those things that are depleting you and redirecting it back to yourself so that you can start thriving rather than just surviving.
5
SPEAKER_00
This all really leads to the five resets.
5
SPEAKER_00
Give me the summary of what that, what do I need to know?
5
SPEAKER_01
So, you know, when I was seeing patients in my clinic in Boston, what I found fascinating is that
5
SPEAKER_01
We all, as a doctor, pattern recognition is what I do, is what all doctors do, which is why I can see 100 people with abdominal pain, belly pain, and I can tell you the difference if this person has pancreatitis or this person has gastritis or ulcers or stress or whatever.
5
SPEAKER_01
We ask a lot of questions and then we can tease out what s happening.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I started to see a pattern with stress, one-on-one with my patients with a large group.
5
SPEAKER_01
Because stress is not this mythical, magical creature.
5
SPEAKER_01
There are actually tangible ways that we can measure our stress, understand our stress, and ultimately overcome our stress.
5
SPEAKER_01
And so the five resets are five small but mighty mindset shifts.
5
SPEAKER_01
along with 15 scientific strategies that get you out of everything that we ve been talking about, that amygdala, fight or flight mode, back into your prefrontal cortex.
5
SPEAKER_01
And it s a way to reframe your stress and burnout and transform your relationship with stress and burnout for good.
5
SPEAKER_01
These are not hacks.
5
SPEAKER_01
Your brain body is too smart for hacks.
5
SPEAKER_01
I really don t like that word very much at all.
5
SPEAKER_01
I think it s about doing small things every day.
5
SPEAKER_01
What was really important for me with the five resets is that everything is free.
5
SPEAKER_01
Because I have been a doctor with seeing thousands of patients with all different resources, having something free, we can t all spend an hour in some fancy spa or doing some therapy.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, whatever it may be because not everyone has access to that.
6
SPEAKER_01
So having everything be free in the book and it s always my approach.
6
SPEAKER_01
Everything I suggest is always free.
6
SPEAKER_01
So that was really important to me.
6
SPEAKER_01
Having a low time cost as well so it s not just about financial cost but time because like I said, right, we talked about what are the things people are really stressed out about.
6
SPEAKER_01
People are stressed out about their jobs, not having the financial means, parenting.
6
SPEAKER_01
People don t have a lot of time.
6
SPEAKER_01
Everyone s juggling life
6
SPEAKER_01
You know, time is our greatest currency.
6
SPEAKER_01
So making sure everything was short on time.
6
SPEAKER_01
So five minutes, ten minutes, here and there, small tweaks and practical.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s got to feel like you can build it into your life today.
6
SPEAKER_01
One of the best feelings that I have is when I give talks or when I m talking to a patient,
6
SPEAKER_01
When someone says that that whatever little nugget I gave them, they re going to start doing it today and then they ll send me a DM like a week later or a month later saying, it totally worked.
6
SPEAKER_01
It totally worked.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s like amazing.
6
SPEAKER_01
So for me, what s the meta of all of this is that I wrote a book on stress and burnout
6
SPEAKER_01
when you are writing a book on stress and burnout and sharing it with the world, you experience a lot of stress and burnout yourself.
6
SPEAKER_01
That s so true.
6
SPEAKER_01
And I doubled down on those five resets, man.
6
SPEAKER_01
I was like... You tested those.
6
SPEAKER_01
I ve tested them for 25 years.
6
SPEAKER_01
But now it was like during that phase, I can t imagine.
6
SPEAKER_01
It was like, for me, it was a game changer to use all of those resets.
6
SPEAKER_01
And I ve always used, I walk the talk and I do all of those resets anyway.
6
SPEAKER_01
but I doubled down.
6
SPEAKER_01
So I protected my sleep.
6
SPEAKER_01
I redrew those digital boundaries because even though you know all of the science about stress and burnout, it s so easy to slip up because we are mere mortals, all of us after all.
6
SPEAKER_01
And so for me, what has been the most gratifying about this journey of writing the five resets is I am used to seeing patients one-on-one and then giving me the feedback.
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They ll always say, Dr. Nookhart, you cured me of my stress.
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You helped me.
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You cured me.
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And I always say, I didn t cure you.
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You cured you.
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Yes.
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All I did was hold up a mirror and show you, and you did it yourself.
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Totally.
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Because it s really important for me to, for people to feel a sense of empowerment.
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Yes.
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That like, I can do this.
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I can do this myself.
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I think just being able to share the human story, my story with others, but also other people s stories, I think my greatest hope for the five resets is this idea of bibliotherapy, which is this idea that a book can help
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you heal.
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It feels therapeutic.
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It creates a community.
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So when you are facing stress and burnout, you don t feel alone.
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Understanding that this is this great paradox of stress, that we are all facing this, 21 out of 30 people, and yet we feel completely isolated.
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in our togetherness.
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Instead, I hope that the five resets and our conversation and all of my work really, really makes people feel like they are seen, heard, understood, and loved and understand that if you re feeling this way, just to normalize and validate this difficult experience of being alive in 2024.
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Yep.
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Yep.
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Amen.
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Amen to that.
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I can t wait for everyone to read it.
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Like, everyone s gonna love it.
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Thank you.
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You re the best.
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You re the best!
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No, you are such a bright light for, I think, of all the ways that you could spend your time.
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Speaking of time and bandwidth,
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There are so many ways that you could spend your time.
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And I really, I ve been a fan of this podcast and of you.
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Thank you.
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And the way you conduct yourself in this world.
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And of all of the things that you could do, you are so interested in bettering yourself, bettering the people around you, your community, making people think about things in a different way.
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And it is such a beautiful legacy.
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Oh, thank you so much.
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Oh my God.
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Now we have to, oh!
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You re gonna make me cry after this, but thank you, thank you.
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And this is like all we can do, you know?
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It s like, what s the point if we re not helping other people?
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That s like what it, it has to be that, if nothing else.
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Well, thank you again for coming on.
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Thank you for having me.
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You re the sweetest ever.
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Oh my god.
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I learned so much.
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Right back at you.