Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: Episode Link
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On this episode, we speak with Dr. Aditi Nerurkar about rewiring our brains for less stress and better coping skills, Dr. Nerurkar is the author of The Five Resets: Rewire Your Brain and Body for Less Stress and More Resilience.
TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome back to Hot Flashes and Cold Topics, everybody. Today, I am really thrilled to have Dr. Aditi Nerurkar on, and Dr. Nerurkar is a Harvard physician,
a stress expert, also nationally sought after speaker, and she is coming out with a book on January 16th, titled “The The Five Resets. Rewire your brain and body for less stress and more resilience.
So welcome to the show today. Thank you so much. I absolutely adore your podcast and it’s an absolute honor to be here. Well thank you so much and Colleen is so sad that she couldn’t be here today.
She is actually on her way out to where you are right now so but I was just talking all air with you that this book I had the opportunity to read it beforehand before the release is so timely right now just what’s been going on with the world what triggered you to say hey I need to write this book right now you know what’s so interesting Bridget is that when we were in this very difficult time individually and
collectively I don’t want to say that P word, but pandemic, you know, we’re clearly in the post -pandemic era, but back in 2020 and 2021, when we were really feeling the effects,
those acute stresses of living through a tumultuous time, is when I was feeling stressed myself as a just woman and mother and wife and doctor going through the world.
living through my first pandemic as well. And there was a brief hiatus in everyone’s work and I was painting and my friends at the time said,
why are you painting? You should be writing about stress and talking to people about stress because this is when we need this wisdom and science more than ever.
And so my friends really initiated this. thought of writing more, speaking more, and getting a little bit more out there. You know, doctors are often socialized to help their patients and play small.
So it was a real exercise. As you talk about often throughout your podcast is stepping into your power and speaking up and sharing your ideas with the world. So I started speaking to large audiences.
I was already a speaker and started speaking more about it. that time because my expertise is in stress, resilience, mental health, and burnout. And I saw these universal themes that I would see in my exam room with patients one -on -one.
I started seeing them on a vast scale that I had never even thought they existed. So similar concerns that patients had pre -pandemic, large audiences were talking about during the pandemic and after the pandemic.
concerns about parenting, productivity, how to manage energy and sleep, how to cope with the shifting demands and expectations of life.
And it’s almost like the audiences that I was speaking to urged me to write this book. So first it was my friends, then throughout my clinical practice, patients would always say to me,
you know, you explain this really nicely. I wish you would write a book. and I would always laugh it off because writing a book is a big undertaking. I didn’t have the energy or bandwidth at the time. But when large audiences started asking me to,
you know, when’s my book coming out? Or could you tell us a little bit more about this? What’s the science behind certain things? That is when I thought, okay, this is something that’s needed. And that’s what really sparked my interest in writing a book.
I had been approached prior. prior, you know, for the book over 10 years from different publishers and people had asked me if I wanted to write a book and that it was never the right time, but it felt almost like I was called to do it because of that collective stress and trauma that we were all going through.
And when I saw it on a vast scale, is when I really felt like, okay, the knowledge that I have, the 25 years of medical training that I have done can really help and impact people.
people in a positive way. And so that was the origin story of the book and it truly is 25 years in the making. It’s my love letter to every single person who has struggled or is currently struggling with stress and burnout.
I talk a lot about my personal story. Before I was a doctor with an expertise in stress, I was a stress patient and I found my way out of my own stress struggle. using science -backed techniques,
and that is what I share in the book. I also shared those same techniques with patients when I had a stress management practice. And I think that just resonates so much with patients when they hear your story and what happened to you and the physical feelings that you felt when you were going through that stress,
that really resonates with patients because we don’t feel alone this profession. professional has gone through this as well, and that they really feel that you understand this.
So that’s something I really got from your book, and also the importance too of the stress and the resilience part, the comparison of the two. Can you go into how maybe not all stress is bad,
and we don’t have to be resilient in the face of everything? – Interesting thing about this book, is that there are actually two kinds of stress for your brain and body.
There’s healthy stress in scientific terms, it’s adaptive stress. And then there is unhealthy stress called maladaptive stress. Those two things are not the same for our brains and our body.
So when you are going through a difficult time per se, and you know, all of the things that you think about as stress, quote and quote stress. fatigue, overwhelm,
anxiety, difficulty sleeping, mood disturbances, and the physical manifestations, headaches, dizziness, GI, you know, stomach issues, all of those are manifestations of unhealthy stress.
Healthy stress, on the other hand, everything good in your life was created because of a little bit of healthy stress. Your first job, getting promoted promoted, getting married,
if you have children having your first child, rooting for your favorite team, buying a new car, all of these things in your life that you have, making a new friend and continuing a long friendship,
these things are all because of a little bit of healthy stress. Our brains and our bodies need a little bit of healthy stress. [END PLAYBACK] The goal is not to live a life without any stress.
That’s biologically impossible. It’s to live a life with healthy manageable stress. And when stress goes haywire is when it becomes unhealthy, maladaptive and all of those physical manifestations and mental health manifestations can happen.
The relationship between stress and resilience is really interesting because for resilience to really show it’s healthy. you need a little bit of healthy stress.
Without stress, there can be no resilience. And you can think about it in a very simple term like learning to swim. When you first learn to swim, you are in the water,
flailing, and resilience is our innate biological ability to adapt, recover, and grow in the face of life’s challenges. And so if if resilience is that innate ability and you’re in the water and you’re trying to swim,
you know, you are feeling a lot of stress and that swim coach who’s saying, go ahead, you can do it, you can get to the other side is helping you through that water and really fostering your sense of resilience.
That’s that healthy stress. The interesting thing though is that most recently, especially over the last couple of years, past several years after the pandemic, but certainly beforehand, resilience has changed,
the meaning of resilience has changed. Prior, let’s say, you know, in the early 2000s, or, you know, even up until like 2019, when we heard the word resilience,
it’s a positive word, it always had a good, healthy, positive connotation. But somewhere during that time during the pandemic. that word resilience started becoming very cringeworthy.
Now we hear that word resilience and we bristle at it. Why? It’s because it’s morphed into something that’s toxic resilience. And I talk about this. Resilience, when you really think about what it is,
it is our innate biological ability. And that’s true resilience. But toxic resilience is that mind over matter mindset, productivity at all costs,
pushing through without recognizing your boundaries. We all know what that looks like. That’s that energizer bunny mentality that just keeps going and going and going.
And that can get you into trouble and worsen your unhealthy stress. Whereas true resilience honors your boundaries, celebrates your ability to say no, understand your boundaries.
and respects human limitations, and most of all, leads with self -compassion, which is a key ingredient in resilience and decreasing your stress over time.
And so I want to debunk this idea of toxic resilience and help people feel less alone because stress is something that happens to everyone, it happens to you,
it happens to me. me. And I think the key, like you said, is to help everyone realize that if you are feeling stressed, especially now more than ever, you are not alone and it is not your fault.
– Right, I mean, in your book, you’re saying if there’s a room of 30 people, was it 30 people, 21 people in there are feeling really stressed at that time,
but everybody, thank you. they need to keep it to themselves. And I found that just so amazing, that’s another thing where you really don’t need to feel alone,
but everybody feels this shame about being stressed. – Yeah, it’s a stressed paradox. It’s like we’re all experiencing this. It’s happening to all of us at different times in our lives.
And yet we are completely isolated in this experience – Yeah, it’s like we’re all at the same time. is a collective experience that we all share. When I was seeing patients in my clinic in Boston, my two o ‘clock patient,
and then my 245 patient, and then my 330 patient, and my 345 patient, every single person was there because of their own stress struggle. Of course, everyone’s stress struggle looks different,
but in that packed waiting room of 30 people, 21 people are there because they’re stressed. And so what would happen often is that patients… would look calm, collected, poised in the waiting room,
come into the exam room, the door would close, they would turn around, I would say, hey, how’s it going? And they would burst into tears. And this is a common practice, I would see it over and over again.
And that is because of this idea of the stress paradox and toxic resilience that we must keep it together at all costs that no matter what, you know, I’m not stressed someone else must be stressed and feeling like you’re weak if you’re feeling any stress not true it is biologically normal to feel healthy stress it is also at this time you know if you’re feeling unhealthy stress and burnout you’re more likely to be the
rule rather than the exception because about 70 percent of people so that’s 21 out of 30 right about 70 percent of people have at least one feature of burnout are at least one feature of burnout are stressed,
and this is across industries. It doesn’t matter what work you do. Most of us are dealing with the aftermath of a couple of years ago, and that’s how that affected our brains and our bodies,
and just managing, you know, like you said, everything happening in the world. It’s all happening at once. Bad news doesn’t stop. Our brains and our bodies weren’t designed to sustain this level of trauma and and grief and just one onslaught after the other.
Right. And you know, when you’re under this continuous stress like this, like you point out in the book, that can increase your inflammatory response and increase you becoming ill.
Can you talk a little bit about why that happens? You know, what’s so interesting is that there was this fabulous study done in the 19th century. Two psychiatrists led the study,
Dr. Holmes and Dr. Rehe. And what they discovered, they studied 5 ,000 people and 43 of the most common life conditions. So good in that,
they studied things like graduation, getting a new job, an outstanding personal achievement, marriage, having children. They also studied divorce. divorce and losing a job and grief and the death of a loved one.
And what they found over time with these 5 ,000 people is that the more life events someone accrued, and it’s not necessarily about the lifespan, but just, you know, the more life events the person experienced,
the more likely that they were going to have a higher stress score, and the greater likelihood that they were going to develop various… illnesses later on. And what they realized is that healthy stress is yes possible,
but even good things in your life can cause stress and unhealthy stress and lead to problems down the road. And this is why we talk so much about this idea of the rule of two,
right? This idea that we can only make two changes at a time if we want our changes to be sustained. sustainable. And so our brains and our bodies, even if it’s a positive thing that’s happened in our lives,
still register change as stress. And that was a hallmark study done in the 1960s that really pointed to this idea of stress,
things happening in our lives change and stress happening in our lives. Not always. you know, you don’t think of something like getting married or having a child or getting a promotion or buying a new car,
things that you think characteristically are supposed to make you joyful and happy. In fact, can in fact lead to stress on the brain, stress on the body. And we have to figure out a way to manage that.
Right. And you know, in your book, you address these five resets that are just so wonderful. So we’ll touch on it because everybody, you got to read the book because it has so many great examples and things in it that you can do with just buying the book.
You can do this at home. That’s what I like so much about this book. So your first one is that you need to get clear on what matters the most.
So can you share just a little bit what that would mean? Sure. So, you know, every single reset, so there’s five resets, which are small but might be mindset shifts.
And then there are 15 science back strategies. And it’s, you know, every reset has several science back strategies for a total of 15. What was really important to me is when I was laying out these science back strategies,
every single one needed to be free, because I as a clinician have seen patients from all walks of life with varying degrees of resources. And so having everything free was really important to me and it’s been important to my patients over the years.
I also wanted to make sure that every single thing that is offered in the book is low time cost, because people who are stressed like me and you and everyone else in this world do not have hours and hours of time at their disposal.
[BLANK _AUDIO] manage their stress. Otherwise we would have by now, we would have gone to spend six months in Paris eating our way through Paris, or two months at a surfing retreat in Bali or hanging out in Costa Rica or all of these fabulous places in the world if we didn’t have the very real practical constraints of everyday life,
right? So everything has to be time. time sensitive. So things have to, when you’re, when I’m suggesting this to patients and when I’m suggesting this to audiences, people are busy and they do not have the time.
So everything has to be quick and easy to do, but effective. And my other criteria for choosing which science back strategy is because I have been teaching patients many,
many dozens of strategies over the years. And so how do you condense the highest performing, most effective strategies into one book? These are the criteria, the last was just practical.
People need to be able to do these in their homes, in the comfort of their homes, completely in private if they want. It’s things that you don’t even have to share with anyone that you’re doing,
but they are all effective and science -backed. And so the first reset, get clear on what matters most is essentially, essentially a roadmap, because when you know you’re why it is easier to get there,
when you have a sense of destination, we all know that managing our stress is good for us. But why is it that so few of us know how to do it? There is a gap between knowledge and information and action.
And my job as a clinician and as a doctor is to help people close that gap. And so that for us is to help people close that gap. reset helps you get clear on where you are,
get clear on where you’d like to be, so that you can see that gap, and then gives you a stepwise approach to get to that destination and close the gap.
The first reset is also interesting in that it is really biologically based, as is everything, but specifically the first reset because because when you are feeling stressed,
your brain is led by the amygdala, which is a small area in the brain that’s a fancy science word, but it’s an area in the brain that is focused on survival and self -preservation. When you are not stressed,
your brain is being led by the prefrontal cortex, which is the area right behind your forehead, right here. What happens is, when you are feeling stressed, it is really difficult.
difficult to think ahead, make plans, organize, all the things that are necessary to get out of your own way and to manage your stress. Those are all things that the prefrontal cortex does.
But when you’re stressed, you’re led by the amygdala. That first reset shifts your biology of stress, gets you out of that fight -or -flight mode, out of that mode that your brain is governed by the amygdala survival self,
[BLANK _AUDIO] -preservation, and it gets you back into that prefrontal cortex mode, strategizing, organizing, and planning. It doesn’t happen overnight, but that first reset,
it has three strategies in it, and using the science of stress and the biology of stress, you learn to work with your biology rather than against it, and it sets the tone for the rest of the book.
Yes, I love the whole thing. about two, the power of two. Because you make it so clear that if it’s more, sometimes it can be impossible to do this task.
And also how you said that it, you know, give it about three months for all of these things. It’s not gonna happen right away. There’s not a quick fix to this, but it’s very doable.
And when you start and you figure out what are the most important things? What are the things that– are really want to happen, then you can find ways to get there. So I thought the examples that you used in the book were just so great.
And then your second one, which is something that I need so badly, is to find the quiet in the noisy world. So can you share a little bit about that? You know,
our brains and our bodies thrive when there is a sense of calm. peace, spaciousness. And we need, your brain and body needs rest and recovery to really function optimally.
The second reset is about finding your quiet in a noisy world. And when you are so focused and hyper stimulated, whether it be through our social media or phones,
whether it be from lack of sleep or the over -committed nature of the brain, of our everyday lives, it is difficult to carve out rest and recovery for your brain and your body. I am living this,
you are too, you know, working motherhood is no joke, as you know, and I think that one of the key elements to my own stress struggle and then finally recovery and now that I’m thriving is this idea of finding quiet,
finding my quiet. In this noisy world. And so there are two main strategies, three main strategies in that second reset on how you can carve some quiet that does not mean that you’re going to retreat in the Himalayas or going to a spa for a month,
though all of us would love to do this. These are practical suggestions that you can build into your everyday messy, open space. over -scheduled life. And they’re backed by science,
so you know that they’re going to be effective. It’s stuff that you can bring into your life every single day. That’s kind of the goal, because when we are learning new habits, we want to train our brains.
And the way we do that using the psychology of habit is to do a little bit every day, rather than once in a while. – Yes, I mean, the whole thing about the phone and being connected to the phone,
I love some of the advice. Just turn off the notifications because I know I’m driving and I’m trying to look at my GPS and then somebody’s popped up a message.
Then I’m like, “What are they saying? I don’t know which road to turn on.” So it’s like that stress there and I’m like, “Turn off the notifications. It’s so easy.” Easy and yet so few of us do it.
That’s right, right. This fear of missing out but then when I’m sitting there driving like it’d be much worse if I ran into a car took the you know wrong turn than to see that notification and then it’s this is one we’ve heard from different people before and it really it doesn’t hit you until you really think about it is sinking your brain with your body it is amazing just that they you have that brain gut gut,
that brain, body, connection. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, many of your guests have talked about the gut brain connection and this particular reset to sink your brain to your body is the mind -body connection,
which is a variant of the gut brain connection or rather the gut brain connection is a form of the mind -body connection. And so in this particular reset,
it’s about tapping into your mind. mind body connection. It’s a term that you’ve maybe heard before, but you don’t really know how to do it. It’s kind of like gravity. It’s all around us.
And yet, like, how do you know it exists? And, you know, once you in this reset, once you see it, you’ll never be able to unsee it. And there are various experiments that you can do that are all science based in this reset.
There are various strategies that you can use in this reset to tap into your mind -body connection so you awaken it. It’s always there running in the background, but now you are aware of it. Once you’re aware of your mind -body connection,
you can begin to positively influence your mind -body connection to serve you. And the mind -body connection is nothing more than the basic understanding that your brain and your body are inextricably linked and in constant communication.
So it’s good for your brain. body, it’s good for your brain and vice versa. And when you do better, you feel better and it’s all in the doing. And so these strategies in this particular reset help you tap into your mind -body connection and then use that mind -body connection of yours to help decrease your stress and boost your resilience from the inside out using your own biology of stress to overcome the stress.
stress. – Right, and I mean, that could come, that just happens like, I don’t know, like when you said in the book where you would feel like the stampede of horses were when you were in med school,
coming through your body and you can feel these things happening, you can feel your heart beating quicker, maybe start sweating, I don’t know if that’s a hot flash or what, but when you know,
palms start sweating, things start happening, and it isn’t, amazing you don’t make those connections until you hear about it. And then there’s things that you can do about it.
And then we talk about coming up for air, which another thing that I’ve learned from hosting this podcast from different people, but coming up for air is so helpful.
Can you share a little bit about what that means? So that is the next reset. reset, the fourth reset. And I offer several strategies that you can use different breathing exercises,
different relaxation techniques to help you essentially literally come up from air. So many of us feel like we are drowning, that we are swimming and really just working so hard just to stay in place,
treading water. And so often we feel like we are drowning. like our productivity is slipping. I know that I certainly have felt like that. So if you’re feeling like you’re burnt out and stressed and you still need to perform at work or in your life or with your family and that we have so many demands,
many of us are caregivers in various capacities. We’re caring for our families, caring for our friends, our loved ones, our ailing parents, our younger children,
our communities. We all we all have, we care in many, many ways. And how can you care for others if you are not caring for yourself? And, you know, fill your own cup before you fill someone else’s.
And that is really a way this reset helps you show up for yourself so that you can show up for everyone else. And what’s fascinating about the science of coming up for air is that your breath,
is the only biological function in your body that is under voluntary and involuntary control. So your heartbeat, you can’t control your heartbeat,
it just beats as it beats. Same thing with your brain waves, your digestion, but your breathing is something that you can control and slow down or speed up and when you’re not thinking about it,
it breathes, your body breathes on its own. The really interesting interesting thing about your breath is that it is the gateway to managing your stress, tapping into your mind -body connection,
simply because of this ability to turn it on or off or your ability to turn it on or off. And when you turn it off, it doesn’t mean you stop breathing. It means that your body takes over again. And so our brains and our bodies,
you cannot exist in fight -or -flight mode, which is governed by the sympathetic. sympathetic nervous system. I’m throwing around some science terms here, but it’s your sympathetic nervous system,
your fight or flight mode, which is that, you know, when you’re feeling that unhealthy stress and all of the things that are happening to you versus your parasympathetic system, which is your rest and digest system,
which is when you’re calm and relaxed. Let’s think about when you’re hanging out on your couch in the evenings and watching some TV and you’re feeling… feeling calm. So if you are having a charged up,
turned on sympathetic system, fight or flight reaction, you cannot equally at the same time have your parasympathetic rest and digest. They are mutually exclusive.
And so in this reset, you are actively shifting away from your sympathetic fight or flight system back into equilibrium, into the rest of your life.
parasympathetic rest and digest system. And there are several strategies in this reset to teach you how to do that in real time while you are experiencing the stress that you’re having.
It also focuses on managing your productivity and helping you feel a sense of calm and groundedness in that hectic pace of everyday life. Yes.
You know, I’ve used that one before, or the breathing techniques. that you include in the book. And I know I’ll be like, I’m on a tennis team, which really in the whole scheme of the world, it’s older ladies tennis.
But people get very nervous before their match. And I was like, you know, you need to do this breathing. Don’t breathe from up here, the shallow breathing, you know, breathe from your diaphragm. And I really,
I heard one girl like while she was hitting and she was doing, she said, I don’t think I breathed at all during that. that little set. I didn’t breathe. And it’s like, Oh my gosh, you’re going to pass out if you don’t breathe.
But it really is amazing how that really can calm you and ground you like you said in the book. And it is amazing. And I’m going to talk more about that. We’ll go to the fifth reset one.
But then I kind of want to jump back and talk about some really cool things that you included in the book. The fifth reset is breathe. your best self forward. So could you talk about that?
The last and final reset, the fifth reset is a culmination of all of the resets that have come before. And it’s about being able to, as you do beautifully in this podcast with the guests,
to really fan that flame of empowerment and using a lens of self compassion. Understand that it’s about progress, not perfection, and having some metrics to gauge your progress,
because we are often our worst historians, you know? We don’t think that we’ve made much progress, and then you’ll have to remind yourself of, oh, I was this way three months ago,
and my goodness, what a change I have had since. And this fifth reset is a culmination. So it’s about learning the love language for your brain. brain. There are various strategies to help you figure out how to speak to yourself with a little bit more self compassion.
Why self compassion matters in the first place. What does it even have to do with stress and resilience? Because we know that when you are feeling stressed, that inner critic of yours is holding that megaphone.
And how do you shift away from that inner critic who is berating you and saying all of these horrible things to you that you would never. say to others. And yet, you know, you’re saying these things to yourself.
Again, it’s not your fault, it’s just your biology. And when you learn to work with your biology rather than compete against it, that’s when real change can happen. And so there are various strategies in this reset to help you silence your inner critic and bring about that sense of flourishing,
compassion, and really embrace. all parts of you, the light, bright parts, the shadow parts of you, but really encourage and celebrate your wins because we can only move forward when we acknowledge and celebrate our wins,
both big but also small and truly the quickest, most efficient path towards less stress and more resilience is to be gentle with ourselves,
which is what this reset really is. really teaches us. And especially as women, we are notorious for not being as gentle with ourselves as we could be. And again,
not an individual failing, it’s a system thing, it’s institutions and we can get all into that, but truly learning how to be gentle and kind and show compassion for ourselves,
just as we do for everyone else that we care for. – That is so true. Women, our listeners need to hear that. And I know women in particular, really they have that inner critic going.
They have given everything to so many other people in their lives. And just like you said, they’re not filling their cup and then they’re at empty.
But that is so important to show some self -compassion to yourself and not compare yourselves to others. That is a big thing. I always think, you know, comparison is the thief of joy.
And I really have to think about that. And like you said, it is systemic. It’s something that’s been taught to us that we need to look a certain way,
that we need to, I don’t know, be a certain size, you know. And so it really is a great, just a great book, a great, great steps in there. And there’s other things in that book that just really were helpful to me.
I loved with the little quizzes, quizzing yourself. – Yeah. – And I was looking at one and I’m like, the first quiz in there was tried to five by notes. I was like a three and every one I knew I was gonna be.
It was like, it was the spurt personalized stress score. I was like, I’ve gotta be honest. I’m a three and all of these, you know. So those are, different things that you can take in there.
I also loved in the book when you talked about going back to something that you enjoyed as a child. Can you talk about how that situation could be so helpful and just around how that happened or how that comes up?
So when you look at the research, particularly Bonnie where she wrote a book, she’s a palliative care nurse. and wrote a book the five regrets of the dying. And she sat at the bedside of tens of thousands of people and the greatest regret that people had the most common regret that people have when they are dying is I wish I had lived life on my terms and not on other people’s terms.
It’s a beautiful book highly recommended. And when you look at the research the scientific literature of what do people regret. What are people. regrets or what do they feel sad about?
It’s often about this idea of not doing what you wish you had done. That doesn’t mean necessarily with work. It just means living a life that’s true and authentic to you.
Often when we are young and when we are children, there are things that we do where we feel a sense of joy, authenticity and really a state of flow.
As we eat. life gets in the way, jobs, obligations, family responsibilities, and we lose that sense of authenticity. Often when you are feeling a sense of stress,
tapping into that authentic you can help alleviate a little bit of that stress. It is a stopgap measure. And so how do you find that sense of joy when you have been an adult and you are an adult?
you know, adulting for lack of a better word and you don’t even know where to start? How do you even tap into that? You think about what you did as a child that brought you joy and that sense of flow.
So I’ve used that word two times now, flow. Flow is a scientific word and it’s a scientific construct. Essentially it means that you are so immersed in the task that you…
forget and you have a sense of timelessness of the present moment. What did you do as a child that made you lose sight of time? For me,
it was swimming, riding my bike, doing art, doing things that I didn’t even know if five minutes had passed or five hours had passed. You are fully immersed. When you are in that state of flow,
you have lots of brain changes that are happening, as well as bodily changes. It is a powerful experience for your brain and body and can help diminish your stress.
So how do you create a sense of flow when you are an adult working, taking care of your family, managing yourself, financial issues, health issues? There’s so many things.
It’s by tapping into that sense of play, joy, curiosity and wonder. wonder, simply for the sake of joy. So it’s not about doing this for others,
no one has to see the activities that you do, but choosing something to really, one of the strategies I talk about is uncover your buried treasure. Find that thing that sparks joy.
And I’ve done this with many, many patients over the years, particularly with my patients with chronic illness who feel a sense, you know, they’re feeling defeated. defeated and to help them manage the emotional component of chronic illness.
And that makes such a difference to minimize your stress. You don’t even have to spend too much time five minutes a day on cultivating your joy simply for joy’s sake. I’ve had patients in the book I write about,
you know, building clay figurines, making model trains or cars, painting, so many wonderful descriptions. For me, it’s painting and doing doing art. The painting I have right behind me is something that I made during the pandemic and I have continued to paint.
I paint pieces all over my home that I’ve done myself. So it really just, I tap into that innate part of me, that the flow, and we all have something different.
And really cultivating that can make such a difference. And we all have stuff that we love to do and finding new things that we love to do. and it’s hard to find it. So I hope you find it.
Like I’ve helped many of my patients find it. You know, when you’re an adult and you have, there’s lots of barriers, right, that we’ve put up over the years. But tapping into that can really make a difference for your stress.
Yes, it really just reading it on paper. It’s almost like it felt like I had permission to do this. Because I read, I was like this research back and I have have permission now which is so silly in me,
but in my head that’s what I felt like I had permission to do this. I want I was just looking just to make sure my goodness just like when time goes by fast like you’re saying but I do want to thank you so much for being on our show today.
Everyone you got to check out the book is the 5 resets rewire your brain and body for less stress and more. resilience. Thank you so much for being on our show today.
Oh, it was such a pleasure. I love your show and I love listening, so thank you for having me. We’ll come back anytime. Thank you so much.