Pod Insights 10% Happier with Dan Harris Stress Reduction: 5 Free, Quick, Science-Backed Strategies | Dr. Aditi Nerurkar About this episode A Harvard doctor on how she went from stress patient to stress expert.
Dr. Aditi Nerurkar https://www.draditi.com/ is a Harvard stress expert, and the author of The 5 Resets: Rewire Your Brain and Body For Less Stress and More Resilience https://www.amazon.com/Resets-Rewire-Brain-Stress-Resilience/dp/0063289210.
In this episode we talk about:
Healthy stress vs. unhealthy stress The distinction between stress and burnout What Dr. Nerurkar calls "toxic resilience" Finding quiet in a noisy world The relationship between scrolling and sleeping The gut-brain connection Key breathing exercises Dealing with your inner critic How to avoid what she calls "revenge nighttime procrastination" Exercises to help you get into your "future self" The rule of two strategy And much more
Related Episodes:
Jon Kabat-Zinn, Creator of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction https://www.danharris.com/p/jon-kabat-zinn-creator-of-mindfulness-bec?utm_source=publication-search Stress Better, Modupe Akinola https://www.danharris.com/p/stress-better-modupe-akinola-c86?utm_source=publication-search How to Thrive Under Stress | Elizabeth Stanley, PhD https://www.danharris.com/p/how-to-thrive-under-stress-elizabeth-570?utm_source=publication-search The Science Of Journaling: How Writing Reduces Overthinking, Rumination, And Anxiety | Dr. James Pennebaker (Co-Interviewed By Dr. Bianca Harris) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-science-of-journaling-how-writing/id1087147821?i=1000677296672
Follow Dan on social: Instagram https://bit.ly/3tGigG5, TikTok https://bit.ly/3FOA84J
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel https://bit.ly/3FybRzD
Our favorite playlists on: Anxiety https://spoti.fi/3Qa8kMT, Sleep https://spoti.fi/3MjtMxF, Relationships https://spoti.fi/3QvyA5J, Most Popular Episodes https://spoti.fi/3QxZASc
Additional Resources:
Aditi on Substack https://mentalhealthish.substack.com/
Transcript 12,910 words · 5 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:04 Dan Harris? It's the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.
0:18 Dan Harris? Hey, gang. Today, we're talking about five ways to reduce your stress. This is timely, anytime. These are all free, evidence-based, and not too time-consuming strategies. And they come from my guest today, who's a Harvard physician, who decided to specialize in stress after becoming a stress patient herself. And she'll tell that story. Her view is that many doctors put stress on the back burner, treating the symptoms of stress rather than the underlying problem. Her name is Dr. Aditi Nerurkar, and she's the author of a book called The Five Resets: Rewire Your Brain and Body for Less Stress and More Resilience. In this conversation, we talk about healthy stress versus unhealthy stress, the distinction between stress and burnout, what she calls toxic resilience,
1:02 Dan Harris? finding quiet in a noisy world, the relationship between scrolling and sleeping, how to avoid revenge nighttime procrastination, which is something I have been guilty of, the gut-brain connection, key breathing exercises, dealing with your inner critic, exercises to help you get in touch with your future self, and the role of two strategy, which is about only making two small changes at a time. Before we get started, I want to make sure that you know about all the good things we've got going on at danharris.com. That is my new-ish online community, built in partnership with Substack, where paid subscribers get cheat sheets and transcripts for every podcast episode. Plus, I do regular live AMAs, that's
1:46 Dan Harris? Ask Me Anything sessions, where I take your questions and more. It's a lot of fun. You'll also get to meet virtually lots of other folks who take all of this stuff seriously. Go to danharris.com. Dr. Aditi Nerurkar, coming up after this.
2:00 Speaker 01 OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.
2:28 Speaker 02 How do I recover from a friendship breakup? How come there's nowhere to hang out anymore? Why do I feel lonely when I can communicate with anyone and everyone through my phone? These are the questions that you're not alone in asking. And that's where our new podcast, Cornerpiece, comes in to start small on life's biggest questions. I'm Taha and with my friends Sabrina and Melissa, we're going to explore life's ungooglable questions on this new podcast with TED. Come hang out with us on Cornerpiece with new episodes every other Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.
3:02 Dan Harris? Dr. Aditi Naurukar, welcome to the show.
3:05 Speaker 03 It is such a pleasure to be here with you today, Dan.
3:08 Dan Harris? Likewise, likewise.
3:10 Speaker 03 Do you know that you were my very, very first ever media interview when I was a fellow at Beth Israel Deaconess? It was Diane Sawyer, World News Tonight, and I was terrified. And you did a segment, it was a study that I published on doctors prescribing mind-body therapies.
3:28 Dan Harris? Did we do it in person?
3:30 Speaker 03 No, we did it virtually.
3:32 Dan Harris? Okay.
3:32 Speaker 03 This is like long before the pandemic, right? It's like probably in 2010, maybe? And the study had just come out and you were using meditation and mindfulness. 10% happier didn't exist at the time. You had talked about your panic attacks. You wrote your book maybe three years later or something. But you were asking me lots of questions about mindfulness, meditation, and I was so afraid of like the gotcha moment. Everyone had told me like, just be careful what you say. Stay close to the science. So I was terrified and I'll never forget it. And everyone had told me like, Diane Soria is going to be this way and Dan Harris is going to be this way, you know, it was fine. I was odd for like a second, like you could blink and you, you explained
4:17 Speaker 03 the study, but I, I wasn't equipped at the time. You know, you interviewed me, but I wasn't, I was like green, truly so green. And I have since been on TV like three to four times a week for years and years, but you were the very first. And so talking to you now is like truly a full circle moment for me.
4:36 Dan Harris? That's great. If you don't mind, I'd love to hear a little bit of your backstory. Like, why did you get so interested in this issue of stress?
4:45 Speaker 03 It's interesting, Dan, because I know a lot about your personal story, as you've shared with many people over the years, right? You had panic attacks on air, which then made you get more curious about meditation. Similar to me, I was a medical resident working 80 hours a week and I developed palpitations. At the time, I was post-call rounding in the hospital after a 30 hour shift and I felt a stampede of wild horses across my chest. And it knocked the wind out of me. It was terrifying. I sat down, the nurse I was working with gave me some orange juice and I, you know, felt better within seconds and continued to work. Then when I went home, it never happened again at work, but every night for two weeks, two to three weeks, it followed me. As I would go to bed, I would feel that
5:27 Speaker 03 stampede of wild horses. So I finally went to go see a doctor and she did the full workup, tested my blood, my electrolytes, tested me for anemia, my thyroid, did a heart ultrasound, EKG, you name it, she did it. And at the end of the testing, she said, everything checks out great. You know, it's all normal. It's probably just stress. Go home and try to relax. So I was not very reassured, but I followed her orders. So I went home and I was single at the time. I went to movies with friends, went out to dinners, retail therapy, I took a vacation. Nothing seemed to work. When I put my scientist hat on and really thought through the science and read everything I could, because I had access to various journals and found out, okay, what is this thing called stress? That affect my brain and my body.
6:12 Speaker 03 When I put my scientist hat on is when I could find my way out of stress. And I started using a lot of the techniques that I started teaching patients later. But at the time, I was just a stress patient myself. And when I found my way out of my stress struggle, Dan, is when I said to myself, I vowed to myself that I wanted to be the doctor to help patients who were struggling with stress. The same doctor that I could have used at the time. And so that's my personal story of how I became an expert in stress. I was first a stress patient.
6:42 Dan Harris? How are we defining stress, especially as opposed to burnout and anxiety? I think those terms get used interchangeably, but they, I believe, are different things.
6:54 Speaker 03 They do get used interchangeably. And I would say particularly now, it's a matter of semantics because the data shows that about 70% of people, in some cases, up to 90% of people in some studies, have at least one feature of stress and burnout. And so stress, the way I define it, is in fact, there are two kinds of stress, and they are not created equal. You have healthy, productive stress, scientifically known as adaptive stress. And then you have unhealthy, unproductive, and dysfunctional stress. Scientifically, we call this maladaptive stress. When you and I, Dan, and others, when we're saying like, oh, it's been a stressful year, or stressful week, or stressful month, what we're talking about is maladaptive stress. It causes all sorts of mental and physical health ramifications.
7:38 Speaker 03 However, not all stress is created equal. And you need a little bit of healthy stress to get you through your day. It helps you become productive. It creates a sense of momentum. That's the adaptive kind of stress. Examples include things like rooting for your favorite sports team, or getting a new job or a promotion, buying a new home, a new car, things that move your life forward. And so the goal of life is not to live a life with zero stress. It's actually to live a life with healthy, manageable stress that can serve you rather than harm you. Now, the distinction between stress and burnout is a little bit interesting because when you think of someone with classical features of burnout, you think that they are apathetic. Disengaged, not really motivated.
8:22 Speaker 03 You know, you're like hanging out on your couch, not really excited about life. And that's when you think of someone with burnout. But these are more classic features of burnout. And more recently, the face of burnout has really changed. And in one particular study, 60% of people with burnout had an inability to disconnect from work as their main feature. So what we're seeing more are these atypical features of burnout. So it's more difficult to identify burnout and/or stress within you and others, simply because these definitions and how they are manifesting are really changing. And then I was just gonna say, you know, from the biological perspective, when you're thinking about stress and burnout and the difference, there's a part of your brain called the amygdala, which you talk about a lot.
9:07 Speaker 03 It is a small almond-shaped structure deep in your brain. It's cave person mode, focused on survival and self-preservation. That's where your stress response lives, the fight or flight response. And your brain and your body are expertly designed to handle short bursts of stress. And we're really good at it. The challenge now is that there's no more short bursts of stress. So when you talk about the fight or flight response, you're talking about this, you know, when you see a tiger in the forest, do you fight or do you run away? That's the fight or flight response, short-term stress. The challenge is that you return back to baseline. But now increasingly, these metaphorical tigers that we have are evolving and changing, and not necessarily a one-off thing. They are chronic in the background.
9:48 Speaker 03 So financial constraints, relationship problems, climate disasters, humanitarian crises. So your amygdala stays on in the background at a low hum. And that is the problem with your brain and your body and its adaptation to stress. And so, you know, when that amygdala is always on and that cave person mode is always on, and you're thinking about your survival and self-preservation over and over again, because of these constant onslaughts, that is what eventually leads to burnout because you don't come back to baseline and you don't have a sense of equilibrium before the next event.
10:25 Dan Harris? So theoretically, it's possible to have some degree of chronic stress, but not yet have reached burnout. But neither of these states is good.
10:35 Speaker 03 That's right. I mean, ideally, we're all going to face a little bit of stress. And ideally, if you could stay, the goal is to stay in that healthy stress range. You know, if you think of stress as a spectrum, to stay towards that healthy stress range, where it fuels you and gets you up in the morning. Because chances are, everything good in your life was created because of a little bit of healthy stress. The challenge is when that stress becomes maladaptive and unhealthy. And over time, that level increases and increases because it has never come back to baseline. And that is ultimately what leads to burnout. So you can think of it as a spectrum. And so our goal is to really stay closer to one end of the spectrum with healthy stress,
11:17 Speaker 03 rather than moving forward into unhealthy stress and eventually burnout.
11:22 Dan Harris? Got it. And just to stay on a definitional tip here for a second. I threw in the word anxiety, which is also used a lot. My understanding, and you'll disabuse me of these notions if they're incorrect, is stress, I've often heard it described as too many demands for your resources to handle. And anxiety is worrying about the future. And often, these are comorbid, they go together. But it is possible to disambiguate them too. Am I in the ballpark of accuracy here?
11:53 Speaker 03 Absolutely. I think that is the most common perception and manifestation of stress and anxiety. But increasingly, what we are also seeing is that stress, you might not have any mental health manifestations of stress whatsoever. You might have some sort of physical health manifestations, like me. And like you, when you were experiencing your stress struggle, and when I was experiencing mine, I didn't cognitively say, I think I'm stressed. I think I'm anxious. I was just functioning. You know, I was taught at a young age, when I was in my medical training, that pressure makes diamonds. And so I was a diamond in the making. And so when something would happen, and there would be some sort of big catastrophe in the hospital, I would rise to the challenge and say, hey, I'm a diamond in the making. And then my diamond cracked. And so when I felt those sensations of wild horses across my chest,
12:38 Speaker 03 that was my manifestation of stress, or what I call your canary in the coal mine. That was what happened to me. So you may experience stress, you may have anxiety, but you may not actually have the mental manifestations of it. And certainly you might not have the awareness that this is happening to you. It might be something physical. So of course, the first step, I'm a doctor, but I always have to say this is go to your doctor, the way I did, the way you did, get checked out, make sure that the physical ailment that is coming up for you is not something that is organically happening in your body with an organ or, you know, a tissues, etc. Because stress is a diagnosis of exclusion in the medical terms, meaning we exclude everything else. And then we say it is stress. So you have to get checked out, you know, because
13:23 Speaker 03 stress can show up, aside from the mental health manifestations, there's physical health manifestations of maladaptive stress, increased frequency of headaches, nausea, abdominal pain, dizziness, heart palpitations, stomach pain, feeling weak, irritable. There's so many manifestations, physical and mental of stress, and it really is on a case by case basis. So first to your doctor.
13:48 Dan Harris? You've just been talking about doctors and you've talked about your training as a doctor and the diamond in the making, etc., etc. I'm not a doctor, but I'm married to one. I'm also the child of two doctors. And I lived with my now wife during her residency and fellowship, and watched the diamond making process in all of its glory and sometimes misery. And I come out of a high pressure environment myself in television news. And I think many people listening to this have had, you know, intense professional training for whatever it is they do and care deeply about. And I guess I'm assuming on some level that you're not saying we shouldn't be putting people into these intense environments and giving them the training and
14:30 Dan Harris? making them the diamonds. I suspect what you're saying, and this suspicion may be wrong, is that we need to go about it in a way that the diamonds are cracking less frequently.
14:40 Speaker 03 Absolutely. I think that alludes to this idea of resilience and what is resilience? Resilience is your innate biological ability to adapt, recover and grow in the face of life's challenges. And you need a little bit of healthy stress for resilience to show itself. So when you think about this relationship between the diamond making process and building your resilience, that healthy stress is really important because resilience doesn't function in a vacuum. You need that little bit of healthy stress to create that sense of resilience. But increasingly, so when I went through my stress struggle and that doctor said to me, "It's just stress. Try to relax," my first thought was stress. Stress doesn't happen to people like me. I'm resilient. And you may have said the same, or people listening
15:25 Speaker 03 may say the same, like, "Oh, come on, stress. I'm not stressed. I'm resilient." And that's really this idea of toxic resilience. And toxic resilience is something that is, we're all socialized, especially those of us who are diamonds in the making, or who have already become diamonds and they've cracked. You are socialized to believe that tolerating large amounts of discomfort is really what resilience is about. But in fact, true resilience, like I said, it's your innate biological ability. We all have it. But true resilience honors your boundaries, understands your human limitations for rest and recovery, and really celebrates your ability to say no. Now, in my case, in your case, in your
16:06 Speaker 03 wife's case, that ability to rest and recover with toxic resilience is not very much celebrated, right? Like, when we were becoming those diamonds in those high-pressure environments, rest and recovery were seen as a weakness. And so what is toxic resilience? It's a mind over matter mindset. It is productivity at all costs. And it's like, all systems go all the time. And every country has its own version of toxic resilience. So in the UK, it's keep calm and carry on. In the US, we have the Energizer Bunny, right? Like, just keep going, no matter what. And unfortunately, at least for me, and likely your wife, and many of the physicians that I know, and also people in your field, and in any field.
16:51 Speaker 03 When you are a high achieving person, you do face a certain amount of stress, but you are also living this resilience myth that resilient people don't get burned out or don't have stress. But the truth is that of course they do, and I did, and you likely did, and perhaps your wife and others, because of this idea of toxic resilience. And so I hope that through my work and the work of others, that we can dismantle this idea of toxic resilience and move back to true resilience. So of course, we need a little bit of stress. That's what creates us as people to be able to function in the world. We want to be resilient, but not at the expense of our mental health.
17:31 Dan Harris? We're going to spend the vast bulk of this conversation talking about things that we as individuals can do to manage our stress, to reset. However, I would be remiss if I didn't point out that for many of us, we live in toxic environments. And so essentially, what you're teaching us to do is to be able to survive and thrive within structures that often are inhumane. Does that sound correct to you?
17:59 Speaker 03 It sounds right on the money. Because, look, I would love to run off to Bali for six months on like a surf hiatus. I mean, sign me up for that life plan, but that's not really reality, right? For all of us, we are managing constraints with, we have family obligations, we're parents, we're working people, we have financial constraints, we're taking care of maybe elderly parents. There are so many constraints on our time, our resources, our energy, now more than ever. And so you can't just say, okay, I'm going to run away and start in a less toxic environment. And so a lot of my work has been in creating a reset because you can reset your brain and body for less stress. I did it while working in a toxic environment
18:44 Speaker 03 as a medical resident. And not because, you know, my hospital and all the people that were working there were wonderful, but just healthcare in general as a system, a broad infrastructure is very difficult and not exactly warm and welcoming to its tradeees.
19:01 Speaker 03 So yes, of course, you can change your brain and biology for less stress without going to Bali, for example, and you can really reset your stress using the biology of stress and the principles of that biology in the middle, in the messy, messy middle of your overscheduled and stressed life. You can do it. I did it, working 80 hours a week. And the other thing that I want to just mention is because I'm a physician and I've seen so many patients with varying resources, everything that I ever suggest to patients and that I wrote about in my book or when I'm giving talks, everything is free. Because, yes, we would all love to spend hours a day doing all sorts of wonderful self-care practices,
19:45 Speaker 03 but many of the patients that I used to see had varying resources. And so there is plenty of good science and it is all free. And that's really important. And of course, time efficient. Yes, we work in toxic environments, but we also don't have a lot of time to spend on managing our stress. And so there is a way to manage your stress, to reset it in your brain and your body, that is cost-free, time-efficient, and practical, more than anything.
20:15 Dan Harris? I like the sound of that. All right. So let's dive into these five resets you talk about in your new book. The first is to identify your most, M-O-S-T. It's an acronym. Can you walk us through that?
20:26 Speaker 03 Absolutely. So when you are facing a sense of stress, your amygdala is on red alert and it's being triggered, right? It's firing in the background. Your amygdala, by design, its focus is your immediate needs. It is cave person mode, focused on survival, self-preservation. What do you need in the immediate terms? When you are focusing on your immediate needs, that is different than what is happening when you are thinking about making a future plan and how can I get better and how can I have less stress? And how do I want to feel three months from now or six months from now? That part of your brain, strategic thinking, forward planning, is governed by your prefrontal cortex. So if you put your hand right here, it's the area
21:11 Speaker 03 Right behind your forehead. That's your prefrontal cortex. The challenge when you're facing stress, acute stress, and you just are stuck and you can't get out or chronic stress, what happens is you can't get out of your own way. And so with so many of my patients, what I would see is like, yes, they know that they want to do all these different things for their stress, but they can't get out of their own way. And this first reset, get clear on what matters most, address this very issue. So it gets you out of your amygdala and back to the prefrontal cortex. You don't know that you're doing that. You're not making that transition because as you're reading and you're bringing some of these strategies into your life, you're like, okay, I'm gonna, you know, get a most goal. I'm gonna follow a backwards plan, etc. But that's essentially what's happening biologically.
21:54 Speaker 03 And so how do you do that? How do you get out of your amygdala? And back into the prefrontal cortex, which governs things like complex problem solving, strategic thinking, forward planning, because you need a plan if you want to get out of your stress struggle. And the way you do that is by creating a most goal. When you are feeling a sense of stress, often your inner critic is going wild. It's berating you. It's saying, oh, you're weak. You'll never do it. Why bother trying? And that inner critic is actually powered by your amygdala because it is trying to keep you safe. It's a self-protective mechanism. And so you might say to yourself, what's the matter with me? How do I feel like this? What's the matter with me? Instead, this first reset reframes that inner dialogue. Instead of what's the matter with me?
22:39 Speaker 03 It's time to ask yourself, what matters most to me? And most is an acronym. M stands for motivating. O, objective. S, small. And T, timely. So you're going to think of a goal that you would like to achieve using these four values. And you want to achieve it in the next two to three months. Now, the reason you want to create your most goal in two to three months is because your brain, to create a habit, it takes eight weeks to build a habit. And falling off and getting back up and falling off and getting back up is part of the habit formation process. And so, give yourself a solid two to three months to get there. And these are not big existential asks, like you want to change something huge, but it
23:24 Speaker 03 can just simply be, I want to have enough energy that when I open my eyes in the morning, I'm not stressed and I can actually get up out of bed and function in the day. Or, I want a new job because I work in a really toxic environment, but I don't have the energy or the resources internally to look for a job. And so, you can think of anything that you want to achieve that would help you have less stress. I want better sleep. I want a better relationship with my kids or my spouse. I want to have more energy. You know, there's a million ways that stress can influence you, but when you figure out, okay, this is what I really want most. This matters most to me. And you use those four principles to create your most goal, that is taking the first
24:06 Speaker 03 step out of amygdala mode to your prefrontal cortex. And then, the next step is the backwards plan. How do you bring that most goal to life through the backwards plan?
24:17 Dan Harris? All right, you can't leave me hanging. What's the backwards plan?
24:21 Speaker 03 The backwards plan, you take a piece of paper. At the top, you're going to write down your most goal and a date, two to three months in the future. And at the bottom, you're going to write today's date. Now, you're going to look at that most goal and you're going to say, okay, what do I need to achieve right before I get to my most goal? And you're going to write that down. On the line below, what do you need to achieve right before you get to that step? And down the page you go until you get to your start, your today. It can take 10 steps, it can take 20 steps, but the purpose of your backwards plan is that it's a one-page visualization of where you are and where you'd like to be. And often, it feels like a giant chasm, right?
25:03 Speaker 03 Like, when you're feeling a sense of stress and you're in your immediate world of survival, self-preservation, it's really difficult to see the future. It feels like it's vast and out of reach. And so, when you create your most goal... When you create your backwards plan and you use them together, you've suddenly come out of your amygdala, you're into your prefrontal cortex and then you can visualize where you need to go. And then that paper, you put it on your fridge, you put it in your cubicle, you put it in a place that you can see it every day. Then you see it, you can be it. You know, there's that famous expression by Soren Kierkegaard, that life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forward. And it's like creating that backwards plan can help you get there. But you first need your most goal.
25:45 Dan Harris? So just walk me through, let's just in, in theory, what's your current most goal? Cause it sounds like this is a rolling process for most goals.
25:52 Speaker 03 Absolutely. Most goals change.
25:54 Dan Harris? Yes. Yeah, go ahead.
25:56 Speaker 03 Sure. And we can do your most goal if you want, or I can do my most goal. So my most goal right now is to lift heavy weights. I feel like that would help me with my energy. I am a woman of a certain age. I'm really thinking about muscle mass. I'm thinking about longevity. It would also help with stress management. So there's many factors of why I want to do this most goal. And so is it motivating? Yes. Is it objective? Yes, because I can actually use certain weights and say, oh, I'm getting better every week. I'm lifting more and more. S, is it small enough to guarantee my success? Yes. And T, is it timely? I'm not setting a goal like I want to lift this many pounds in two to three months,
26:38 Speaker 03 but simply saying I want to build in weight training into my everyday life. And so this is a good example of how I've done this. And I've literally just done this on January 1st. So what I have done is I started a program. I've always wanted to build weight training into my life. Never felt that sense of urgency. I'm a regular lifelong exerciser, but I do other forms of exercise, walking, Pilates, bar yoga and light weights. But I really wanted to start lifting heavy. And I knew that that would be helpful for me because it will also bring a sense of agency. Like, wow, I did it. I can do something else because we can do hard things, right? So that was my most goal. And so I created a backwards plan. It's like, okay, this is where I am now. This is where I want to be. How do I get there?
27:21 Speaker 03 And step by step, I went down the page and I listed all of those steps that I need to take to get there. And then I have this, I have this hanging up in my home gym right now. And my most goal will change, you know, once I achieve this, then I'll go on to something else. What I've also done, and this is another principle that you can use when it comes to bringing something into your life, M O S, small, right? Initially, I was thinking, oh, I'll do an hour of exercise several days a week. But when you're feeling a sense of stress, the reason so many of us will say, oh, I'm going to exercise and lift weights and, you know, go to the gym and you're feeling a sense of stress, chances are you'll go zero or one time, even though you aim to go every three times a week because it's just too large of a lift.
28:04 Speaker 03 Instead, say to yourself, I'm going to do a little bit every day. And so I personally found a weight program that was 30 minutes a day. And I've committed to it. And now it's been, I don't know, I probably started mid-December and I committed January 1st. And it's been several weeks and it's been great because often when you feel a sense of stress, if you say to yourself, oh, I'm going to do all of these grand things. What often happens is that you get decision fatigue. And so if this doesn't resonate with some of your listeners, and if you're saying, oh, like, I don't need to do weights. I just need to get off the couch and start moving a little bit. Commit to a 20-minute walk. It's the same as a social media scroll. Pick your poison. Is it TikTok or Instagram or LinkedIn or whatever you're doing?
28:47 Speaker 03 Instead of doing that scroll, go for a walk instead because it's about habit formation. It's about the psychology of habit and doing something a little bit every day can actually make a difference in the way your brain is wired. It takes eight weeks to build habit. And this is really the promise of mental fitness, not physical fitness. What also happens is when you build habits like this, using short things like your most goal, it increases your sense of agency. And that's a medical term, or it's a term in psychology, which simply means that it increases your sense of self-confidence and your ability to say, wow, I did this. I can do something else that is just as hard.
29:28 Speaker 03 What that does in turn is that it silences or decreases the volume on your inner critic. So it's all connected.
29:35 Dan Harris? What's interesting about this first of the five resets we're going to go through is that it seems to work on both an acute level and on a sort of mid to long-term level. Because on an acute level, if you're stuck in your amygdala, perseverating, catastrophizing, the act of creating a most goal puts you back in your prefrontal cortex because you're in problem solving, you're feeling creative, you're envisioning. And then, of course, once you follow through on the goal, especially if you've focused on the S and made it small, but once you've got some wins on the board, it's creating over time, a sense of, as you've said, agency, a reduction in the prominence of the inner critic. So it's kind of operating on a couple of levels at the same time.
30:21 Speaker 03 Absolutely. And I think, you know, in many ways, when you're talking about stress, burnout, or even health and wellness, we're all connected, right? It's all interconnected. So when you do good, you feel good. And that forward momentum is what you want to really get at. And then it also transforms your relationship with stress. So another wonderful thing about exercise, and you can use any sort of example here, is that when you push yourself a little bit, right? Like, this is the perfect description of what healthy resilience is, or healthy stress and resilience. It's like, yes, it hurts to lift those weights. I mean, I'm sore almost every day, but then I feel such a sense of power and accomplishment that I want to do it the next day. But it's not too much. It's not to the point where I'm saying, forget it, I'm throwing in the towel.
31:07 Dan Harris? Coming up, the good doctor talks about finding quiet in a noisy world, the relationship between scrolling and sleeping, how to avoid revenge nighttime procrastination, the gut-brain connection, keep breathing exercises, and much more.
31:25 Speaker 01 OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.
31:56 Dan Harris? Stress reset number two, finding quiet. Take it away.
32:02 Speaker 03 You know, Dan, this is something that I think you will very much relate to with your background in broadcast journalism. I'm also a health communicator and do a lot of TV work now. And I think about this a lot, particularly in the digital age. And so this particular reset, find quiet in your noisy world focuses on two main strategies. And the big buckets of that, so in the book, The Five Resets, there's five mindset shifts. And then there are 15 science-backed strategies. And so in this particular reset, the second one, find quiet in your noisy world. It focuses on digital consumption and sleep. And the reason it focuses on those two is because there is a strong link between scrolling
32:46 Speaker 03 and sleeping, as well as stress and scrolling. So we can talk a little bit about both of those. The first big strategy in this reset is to create digital boundaries. You know, when you are consuming the news, what often happens, as you know, being in the news business for so many years, is that news consumption has a direct impact on your brain chemistry because clickbait works on the biology of stress. It is an attention economy after all. And so as you are consuming the news or scrolling through headlines or social media, you often think this is passive. Like, I'm not doing anything. I'm just mindlessly scrolling, right? Like, how many times do we say that? I'm just, I'm not doing anything. I'm just scrolling. It is not passive.
33:29 Speaker 03 It has a direct influence on your brain, on your circuitry, on your brain chemistry. And it is powered by your stress response. When you are scrolling, what often happens is, and with any disaster, humanitarian crisis, the latest news, election, you name it, you're reading through these headlines, it directly influences your stress response. And so your amygdala is triggered. Volume goes up on the amygdala, you start scanning and looking for more news. And then you read some more and you read some more. This is not you. It is not your fault. It is just simply your biology of stress doing exactly as it should. As I said earlier, the amygdala is cave person mode.
34:13 Speaker 03 Think back to when we were all cave people living in tribes. The tribes slept and at night, there would be a night watchman scanning for danger. Now, we have all become our own night watchmen. We scan for danger all day long. And how do we do that? By scrolling. It is your primal urge to scroll. It is your self-preservation mechanism that is kicked into high gear. When something is happening 3,000 miles away or 10,000 miles away, your amygdala doesn't know the difference. It could be happening in your backyard. We call the amygdala in medicine reptile brain. It's the reptilian part of your brain. It has not evolved the same way as other parts of your brain. And so this particular reset, find quiet in a noisy world, is about creating digital boundaries. Why do we need digital boundaries?
34:59 Speaker 03 In every healthy relationship in our life, Dan, there are boundaries. You have a boundary, you have certain boundaries with your wife, with your kids, with your colleagues, with your friends. We all have boundaries in our lives. And yet we have no boundaries and likely very porous boundaries when it comes to the relationship we have with our digital devices. And so it is more important now than ever to ask yourself the question, who's in control, me or my phone? And to reconsider your relationship with your digital devices, to find that quiet. So this is not about becoming a digital monk. I think that it is more important now than ever, than ever, to be an informed citizen, but not at the expense of your mental health. And the data proves this.
35:42 Speaker 03 So they have done studies on abstinence, absolutely removing technology and abstaining from all digital devices. And they found that it's not as helpful for health and wellbeing as decreasing your reliance. And so that's really what it is. And I offer several strategies, one of which is grayscale. The other is to remove your phone, to get your phone off your nightstand. And there are several others. I can talk a little bit about grayscale if you want. And then the other piece of this that is so tied to finding your quiet and digital boundaries is your sleep. Because think about it, Dan, the minute you wake up in the morning, before your second eye is even open, you are scrolling. You are looking at headlines. You are looking at your Slack channel, your email,
36:25 Speaker 03 and your second eye has not even adjusted to the light. And that is automatically priming your brain for stress during the day. So instead, I'm not saying, you know, you have to renounce technology. You don't have to put your phone in another room. Just put it off your nightstand. So you get up, maybe say good morning to your bed partner, brush your teeth, use the bathroom, stretch a little bit, get acclimated to the light of day, and then check your phone. Give yourself that buffer. Same thing at night. So often, we have our phones on our nightstands. We're exhausted and we say to ourselves, like, I'm really going to go to sleep early tonight. And then, you know, the kids are in bed, you've made dinner, you've cleaned up the kitchen, it's finally me time. That happens
37:05 Speaker 03 a lot to moms especially, but of course dads too, and people who don't have kids. It's the end of the day. It's 9:00 PM. Dinner is done and it's your time. And you're saying to yourself, I'm gonna go to bed at 10 o'clock tonight. I really need a good night's sleep. Big sigh, you sit on the couch, maybe you have some TV on, pick up your phone. Next thing you know, it's 1:00 AM. What happened? You're like, what did I just do? I wasted all this time. And it's because of a phenomenon called revenge bedtime procrastination, which you may have heard of. And it's what we all do because we don't get that me time during the day. And you are just so in need. This is why your brain and your body need rest and recovery. So there are many ways that you can bring quiet in your noisy world
37:51 Speaker 03 without renouncing technology or renouncing the world. This is not about censorship. I really want to make a point and say that because medicine and journalism are my two great loves. And I think that it is so important to be informed, but not at the expense of your mental health.
38:06 Dan Harris? So just to be super clear, because you dropped a few breadcrumbs there that I think we should pick up on. Grayscale is one of them. And the second is just a little bit more on exactly how to avoid revenge bedtime procrastination.
38:21 Speaker 03 I love it. So grayscale. When you are looking at your phone, and I'm going to show you how we can do it together. It's a colored screen, right? I took this picture from the Amalfi Coast. And now you can set your phone to grayscale, which simply means changing it to black and white. I have my action button that does that. And then I turn it back on. But there's a way to do that in the menu and I can go through each step if you want. But the reason you set your phone to grayscale during periods of focus, concentration, and particularly at night is because when you switch your phone off of color mode to black and white
39:01 Speaker 03 mode, what you are doing, studies show that it decreases your screen time, it decreases your reliance on your devices, right? We've talked about readjusting and reconsidering our relationship to technology. And the reason it does that is because it makes scrolling less enticing and for lack of a better word, less addictive. And we can talk about the difference, but you know, it's not true internet addiction, what we have, we have something called popcorn brain, which we can talk about in a second. And so grayscale, what it does is it just decreases that hook, that need that we have to keep scrolling. So initially you will start scrolling and you'll be like, okay, I think I'm gonna go to sleep now. You know, a marketing executive described it as you're walking through the grocery store.
39:46 Speaker 03 And imagine if all of the cereal boxes, instead of the bright technicolor, they were just all black and white. It would just change your experience entirely. You'd go for the thing that was more nutritious and the thing that helped you more in your health and wellbeing, but because of those bright colors, it keeps you online. It's the user interface. And so when you switch your phone to grayscale, and you can do this very quickly, I'll just walk your listeners through, you go to settings, accessibility, display, color filters and grayscale. And for the newer smartphones, there's an action button on the side that you can set to whatever you want, and I have set it to grayscale. The challenge is when people learn about grayscale, they're like, oh my God, this is truly life changing.
40:30 Speaker 03 It really did change my life. The challenge is that you can't stay on grayscale all day. People will say, I'm gonna just be grayscale in my phone all the time. Because believe it or not, you need the colors. That's part of the hook of technology. You need the colors. You can't, you know, shop online without the colors because you don't know what you're choosing and what you need, et cetera. So you do need colors, but especially when you want to focus. When you want to decrease your reliance, if you're working on a project and a deadline, you don't want to grab your phone, set it to grayscale. At night, set it to grayscale. And the link between what is revenge bedtime procrastination? It's like that teenage, I'm gonna stay up late. You know, it's similar to that. You have been all day, you have been spending time taking care of others, right?
41:15 Speaker 03 Like, meeting other people's obligations, requirements, needs with our work and our deadlines, and then our kids and our spouses, and you're taking care of everyone else. And so you haven't really ever given yourself any me time. And so 9:00 PM rolls around, you sit on the couch, you haven't taken a break all day. And that is your break. It's almost like your brain and your body demand that sense to decompress. Instead of grabbing your phone, yes, of course, wouldn't it be great if we could just grab a novel and read? But because of that pull, it is really difficult to do. I also want to bring in another concept into this conversation called popcorn brain. I mentioned it earlier. When you're on your phone and you are feeling that sense of stress, and you've heard the term doom scrolling, a stressed brain is more at risk for popcorn brain.
42:00 Speaker 03 And what popcorn brain is, it's the sensation of your brain popping from spending too much time online. It is very much linked to that primal urge to scroll and scanning for danger. And many of us, particularly now, have that sense of popcorn brain. And so how do you decrease that popcorn brain sensation? By the way, I want to mention popcorn brain is different than internet addiction. We often will say, like, you'll hear people say it all the time, I think I'm addicted to my phone. Internet addiction is exceedingly rare. It is a DSM-5 criteria. It means that you are having a difficult time managing your internet use and your
42:41 Speaker 03 social relationships, or your work, or other aspects of your life. Most people do not have true internet addiction. It's very rare. However, most people do have popcorn brain, and those are very different. Popcorn brain doesn't interfere with your life in that way. It just is modern life. So really managing that, it's all very connected. And so a lot of the strategies that I offer in this reset is to operationalize. All of these things. So one way is grayscale. The other is to take your phone off your nightstand. And when you do all of these things, you can decrease your sense of revenge bedtime procrastination, which will then hopefully get you to bed earlier.
43:25 Speaker 03 We know that the golden hour for sleep is between 10 and 11 at night. Hopefully it will get you to bed closer to 10 P M. Sleep is incredibly therapeutic for stress and burnout. And you will get deeper, more restorative sleep. Over time, it doesn't happen overnight. Give yourself eight weeks. That could also be a most goal for some people. I want to be on my phone less. Or I want to get better sleep. Or I want to get to sleep earlier. And so it's all very connected. And over time, this is how we find quiet in the noisy world. You had mentioned earlier in our conversation, it doesn't mean that you have to like renounce everything and leave and go somewhere else. And you can still work in a toxic environment, et cetera. But it just gives you this ability to reclaim your time,
44:09 Speaker 03 your energy and your focus right here, right now, using the biology of stress, of course.
44:15 Dan Harris? The revenge bedtime procrastination thing is a huge thing for me. And just to say very briefly, because I want to move on to the other resets. But one thing that's helped me is not only removing the phone from the nightstand, but also putting the phone away pretty early in the evening. I put it away for dinner and then sometimes I go back to it to catch up on a little bit of work. Then I try when I'm, you know, when it's really me time, nine, nine thirty, to not have my phone with me and to have my treat be Netflix or a movie or something like that. And then I, you know, usually do a little walking meditation and go to bed and maybe read a little bit in bed. But having the phone somewhere else, not as a second screen while I'm watching TV, has made a huge difference for me.
45:00 Speaker 03 That's amazing. I do that, too. I practice what I preach. And the other phenomenon to just mention, exactly like you're saying, in addition to popcorn brain is brain drain. And the phenomenon is simply that just having your device within arm's reach, the sheer potential for distraction has actually been shown to change your prefrontal cortex. And so like you, you know, it's very wise that you're just keeping it out of sight. It's just not even in sight. That is decreasing your personal risk of brain drain, as well as popcorn brain.
45:35 Dan Harris? All right.
45:37 Dan Harris? Reset number three, syncing your brain and body. Please explain.
45:42 Speaker 03 A lot of this particular reset, Dan, really focuses on, you know, I think where your work and my work comes together. It's the mind body connection, connecting your brain and your body. A lot of people, when they hear the term mind body connection, they're like, ah, it's all woo woo. What is that even? But from birth, you have experienced the mind body connection. It's like gravity. It's all around you. You may not recognize it as such, but it is truly your brain and your body are communicating to each other at all times. So sweaty palms before a meeting, palpitations as you're walking in to do something new, butterflies in your stomach as you're falling in love. These are all examples of the mind body connection. Your brain and your body are inextricably linked and in constant communication.
46:25 Speaker 03 The new learning here is that, yes, the mind body connection has been happening all around you, within you at all times since birth. But now we know that you have the power to influence it and change it to help manage your stress. And so in this particular reset, I offer several breathing techniques that can help you do that. So diaphragmatic breathing, four, seven, eight breathing. And the reason breath is so important to sync your brain and your body is because your breath is the only physiological mechanism that is both under voluntary control and involuntary control. Your heartbeat doesn't do that. Your brain doesn't do that. Your digestion doesn't do that.
47:11 Speaker 03 And so you can use your breath as a gateway to help modulate, or rather influence your brain and your body because they're very much connected. And in this particular reset, there is also another offshoot of the mind body connection, which is the gut brain connection. It is similar to the mind-body connection. You know, we use that in colloquial terms all the time. I had a gut feeling that this was going to happen, or my gut told me. We have all of these ways to describe the gut. In fact, one of my mentors, early mentors at Harvard, used to say, I don't know why we wear necklaces with hearts on them. We should wear necklaces with like the intestine, because that's really your second brain.
47:54 Speaker 03 We know that your gut, particularly your gut, has three to five times more serotonin receptors than your brain. And there's a new entity. So we know about the microbiome, which is an ecosystem of healthy bacteria, three trillion bacteria, microbes, et cetera, that support all sorts of functions, including stress, resilience, your mood. And now there's a new finding of the psychobiome, which are certain bacteria whose sole focus is to regulate your mood. And so you can use lots of strategies, aside from the mental health strategies, to help modulate your stress using the gut-brain connection, which is an offshoot of the mind-body connection.
48:37 Speaker 03 Exercise is a great way to get out of your head and into your body. You can use certain foods or certain ways of eating. And so we're all connected. And this is just, this particular reset really goes deep into the mind-body connection.
48:51 Dan Harris? Can you pick one of the breathing techniques and just really walk us through it?
48:55 Speaker 03 Yeah. So one particular technique, very broadly, just diaphragmatic breathing. What is it? Why should we do it? You and I practice diaphragmatic breathing likely all the time. And so the reason we want to focus on diaphragmatic breathing, and what is it? It's just deep belly breathing. When you see babies, they do diaphragmatic breathing. They practice and they breathe through your bellies. You see babies doing that. And then sometime in like, early adulthood, we start becoming thoracic breathers, which is like up here, breathing quick. And when you're feeling anxious, your breath is most likely short, quick, and very shallow. We call it shallow breathing. When you flip the switch and you start focusing when you're feeling anxious,
49:38 Speaker 03 deep belly breathing, so letting your belly rise and fall, it actually switches something in your brain. And what it does is you have two nervous systems in your body. One is the sympathetic and the other is the parasympathetic. I don't want to get too scientific and these are just long scientific words. But the sympathetic system is your fight or flight. And that's what is triggered with stress. The other one is parasympathetic rest and digest. The two are mutually exclusive. They can't be on at the same time. And so when you use your breath, which is the only biological mechanism, like I said, that is under voluntary and involuntary control. When you're just hanging out and you're talking and you're anxious, you're doing this quick shallow breathing from up here.
50:23 Speaker 03 When you suddenly make the switch, take some deep belly breaths when you're feeling anxious. Suddenly that sympathetic system, the fight or flight, the anxiousness is dialed down and the parasympathetic system is dialed up. And so you can use your breath to modulate between the two. And so I think one really easy technique to talk about in this particular, you know, sync your brain to your body is stop, breathe, be. It's a three second brain reset. It was the very first thing I learned when I was a stress medical resident. I learned it from a wonderful teacher named Dr. Michael Bame, also a physician at the University of Pennsylvania, who taught a class mindfulness for healthcare providers. It was my initial entry into MBSR, which you're really familiar with, Dan.
51:08 Speaker 03 Stop, breathe, be is a three second brain reset. The instructions are in the name. You're going to stop, breathe, and just be. When I practiced stop, breathe, be, I did it about 30 to 40 times a day. I would do it when I would knock on the door of the patient room. I had 30 to 40 patients and I would turn the doorknob and I would say to myself, stop, breathe, be. And it was that reset that I needed and then I would enter the patient's room. Now I often use it when I'm clicking join Zoom. I say stop, breathe, be. Before you and I started speaking, Dan, I practiced stop, breathe, be. It's a great doorknob question. It's a great way as you're entering a room or exiting a room, regardless, even if it's a Zoom room. I use Stop Breathe B over and over again. And when you use it incrementally over time,
51:53 Speaker 03 what it does is it recalibrates your brain away from stress, you know, away from that maladaptive stress back to healthy stress because it taps into your mind-body connection because it uses your breath as the gateway. And it's a three-second brain reset. You asked me about anxiety earlier. Anxiety is a future-focused emotion. It's all about what if, like, what if this happens? And what if I don't do well? And what if, what if, what if, what if? Instead, when you practice Stop Breathe B, it gets you out of that anxious what-if thinking and back to what is in the here and the now. And so that's a great way that you can tap into your mind-body connection and bring in a lot of these teachings
52:36 Speaker 03 from this particular reset into your everyday life.
52:40 Dan Harris? I like it.
52:44 Dan Harris? Coming up, DeeDee talks about the importance of monotasking and taking breaks, exercises to help you get into your future self, and the crucial role of two strategy.
53:02 Dan Harris? For both of us, the cold weather is now officially back. I, however, am not dreading it this year because I've got Bombas. They make socks, slippers, and footwear that keep me warm and cozy and snug all winter long. And everything they make is great for gifting. So I'm also not stressed about the holidays. Bombas makes slippers for staying cozy inside, and now they make footwear for going out and about. From fuzzy sundae slippers for lounging around in to water-resistant suede booties that can handle the winter. Bombas socks are a winter go-to as well. Merino wool and cashmere blend socks for warmth, fuzzy socks and plush gripper socks for cozy vibes at home. They also, of course, make socks that you can exercise in. I am a heavy user of Bombas socks for working out.
53:47 Dan Harris? I also wear them when I'm wearing sneakers out and about because they look good and they're really, really comfortable. And the best part about Bombas? For every item you purchase, they donate an essential Item to somebody facing housing insecurity. One purchased equals one donated with over 200 million donations and counting. Head on over to bombas.com/happier and use the code happier for 20% off your first purchase. That's B O M B A S dot com slash happier and use the code happier at checkout.
54:16 Speaker 04 Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.
54:50 Dan Harris? Number four, come up for air.
54:54 Speaker 03 It's interesting because you would think that I would be using a lot of the breathing techniques for this particular reset. But this reset is all about carving out rest and recovery for your brain. Rest and recovery are biological needs. It is a necessity for your brain. It is not a luxury. And unfortunately, when you just go, go, go, go, go, it's a manifestation of hustle culture, right? Like, you're just always on the go. And so, one really important reset for this particular one, the fourth reset, is to stop multitasking. So, we talked about what the prefrontal cortex does. And multitasking is actually a myth. It is a scientific misnomer.
55:39 Speaker 03 There is no such thing as multitasking. When you are multitasking, what you are doing is task switching, doing two separate tasks in rapid succession. And your brain is wired to do one thing at a time. You know, Dan, even though you and I and maybe others, you might think like, oh, I'm an excellent multitasker. The truth is only 2% of human brains can effectively multitask. And what multitasking does is it weakens your- Prefrontal cortex, it weakens your ability to solve complex problems. It decreases your attention, cognition, memory, focus. Ironically, multitasking also decreases productivity, which is why a lot of people start multitasking in the first place.
56:24 Speaker 03 The antidote to multitasking is monotasking. Monotasking is doing one thing at a time. And so when I suggest monotasking, people are like, really? Eyebrows raised, arm crossed, like you're telling me to do one thing at a time. You can, in fact, monotask
56:41 Dan Harris? Yes.
56:42 Speaker 03 in the competing demands of your everyday life. And you can do this by practicing something called time blocking. Time blocking was a strategy I learned early in my medical training. When I was a medical student, I had to retain copious amounts of information from different subjects. And so I would monotask and I would time block. And the way I started was five or 10 minutes. I would focus on one particular task, then take a short two to five minute break. And then I'd come back and 15 minutes on task two, take a short break and do the same for task three and task four. And so you can do this with any work task or school task, et cetera. And so when you monotask and practice time blocking, what you do is that you preserve your prefrontal cortex and decrease your stress in the process.
57:27 Speaker 03 And it's really important, as you get better and better at time blocking, then you can increase your time that you were spending on the task. So when I was writing the five resets, I practiced all of these things. You know, I kept my phone in another room. I monotasked and I would set a timer, 45 minutes. 50 minutes is the maximum I do. And then I always take a break. And the reason these short breaks are so important is because it's a biological need for your brain. In one particular study done at Microsoft, they found that the short incremental breaks, this particular study used 10 minute breaks. These short 10 minute breaks throughout the course of the day, when they looked at the brain scans of people who took no breaks and then took these short incremental breaks.
58:12 Speaker 03 Studies found that there was improved cognition, engagement and focus. And the researchers said it is a brain reset for cumulative stress. In another study through the NIH, even a three second break made all the difference. And in this particular study, what was fascinating is that it was studying learning new tasks, which is what we all do in our work. Right. We're always trying to learn something new or being charged with a new project or a deadline, et cetera. And this study, just taking those three seconds of a pause, found that it improves learning. And what the researchers discovered in a fascinating sort of turn of events was that practicing this new task, the practice, practice, practice,
58:56 Speaker 03 is not what actually cements new learning. It is the pause that makes new learning possible. And so when you're thinking about rest or practice or rest and learning, both are needed. And the process scientifically, not to get too technical and scientific, the process was called neural consolidation. Essentially, there's just information out there everywhere in the ether in your brain. And then how do you cement that down into learning and knowledge? It's by taking breaks. And so if you're listening, this is your permission, doctor's orders, to take a break, give yourself permission to take a break. It's actually good for your brain and your body,
59:39 Speaker 03 particularly as it relates to stress and burnout.
59:42 Dan Harris? Are there do's and don'ts for like what you should do on the break? Because I'll be honest, I do try to take breaks. But I'm realizing that, and I'm almost embarrassed to admit what I'm about to say here. Sometimes when I take a break, I watch funny videos on TikTok.
59:58 Speaker 03 Yeah, that's a great question. You know, ideally, when you take that break, getting up and moving a little bit, doing some deep breathing and stretching is great. Because what happens is, like you, most people scroll. Like you take a break, you just grab your phone and, you know, before your next meeting, you have like four minutes or five minutes in between. You grab your phone, you scroll, you Laugh at videos, you see like a funny cat meme, you might check your email really quickly and then you go right back into it. But you haven't really necessarily, you get that immediate respite and a laugh, which is fantastic for stress and burnout. Of course you want to laugh, but maybe mix it up. So yes, for this particular break,
1:00:41 Speaker 03 scroll through funny TikTok videos. It makes you happy. It brings you joy. It makes you smile. That's great. That's a great pressure reliever in the moment. And then maybe for the next break, get up and walk around, do some stretching, be a little bit intentional with your breaks. And then you can come back and, you know, kind of switch it up a little bit. But yeah, managing your stress should not cause you more stress. And so if funny TikTok videos bring you joy, do it. But understand that you should probably bring in other forms of breaks throughout the day as well. Simply because we know based on the primal urge to scroll, that you can easily fall down that rabbit hole with technology and the pull of digital consumption that goes with it.
1:01:22 Dan Harris? Yes, as I interpolate back into my recent life and think about the various types of breaks I take, because I am pretty good at taking breaks. Sometimes I, I watch TikTok, but it's probably more restorative the other types of breaks I take, which include stepping outside, going to find a cat I can bother, playing catch with my son, bothering my wife. They're all more restorative than the
1:01:48 Dan Harris? digital fentanyl of TikTok.
1:01:51 Speaker 03 Yeah. And you know, when you're doing these other restorative breaks, as you say, you can kind of think about breath feet posture. That's like my triad of, am I, am I engaging my mind body connection? So when I'm out and about, like walk to go get some tea. That's like a nice way to make some herbal tea, go stand up, take a walk and get some tea and come back and sit down. That moment I think about my breath, so I take some deep breaths, think about my posture as I'm moving through space, like where is my body? How am I holding my body? Try to sit up, you know, a little straighter as I'm walking and then think about my feet on the floor. So I just kind of do that mental checklist and then I come back and I'm feeling refreshed. And then I can start the second block of time, whether that is a meeting or some deep work writing or whatever it may be.
1:02:37 Dan Harris? Finally, the fifth reset is bring your best self forward. What does that mean?
1:02:44 Speaker 03 Dan, this is the culmination of all of those former strategies. This book is a roadmap and you don't necessarily have to go from reset number one to reset number five. You can start anywhere you want. This particular reset is really about bringing your best self forward for your future. And it focuses on two key strategies. The first is self compassion and the second is gratitude. And there's a lot of science for both. We talked a little bit about this idea of your inner critic, especially when you're starting something new, like if you're saying to yourself, I'm gonna bring some of these changes into my life and I'm going to start having less stress, or I'm gonna create a most goal and
1:03:27 Speaker 03 I'm going to try to use a backwards plan and bring this into my life. Your inner critic might say, no way, you're not gonna achieve it. You never do anything. You fail at everything. Why bother trying? I've heard that myself from my inner critic when I've started something new. The reason your inner critic gets a megaphone during periods of stress, by the way, your inner critic, that voice is powered by your stress response. You know, I feel like I'm on the prices, right? Like what's behind door number one? It's your stress response. It's always like ding ding ding. It's your fight or flight. And so really, when you're feeling that inner critic's voice come in your head and really berating you, it's because you're feeling a sense of stress and that inner critic gets
1:04:10 Speaker 03 a megaphone because it's powered by your amygdala, the fight or flight response. That inner critic surprisingly is a self protective mechanism. It's meant to keep you safe. It's meant to keep you in your comfort zone. And when you're trying something new and, you know, moving forward into some unknown, even if it's good for you, your inner critic's like, nope, nope, we're not going there. And so self compassion is a way to decrease the volume of your inner critic. And the way it does that scientifically is that self compassion actually does decrease the activity of your amygdala. So being kind to yourself in this process, having a lot of grace and self compassion is really how you achieve it. And then the second is gratitude.
1:04:54 Speaker 03 Gratitude is not just like a teenage girls journal, like I'm gonna write about all the things I'm grateful for, you're gonna write for an hour. This is a very prescriptive exercise. So you're going to write down five things every day that you're grateful for and why. And studies have shown demonstrated effect 30, 60 and 90 days, improving your mood, improving your sense of well-being, decreased depression for many patients as well. And so these two things, along with another strategy called therapeutic writing, which could be very helpful. It is a technique that I have used many times. And essentially it's four consecutive days, 20 to 25 minutes each day. I set a timer and you write about a traumatic event that you've been through. So it can be anything.
1:05:37 Speaker 03 It can be, you know, trauma with a small t, trauma with a big T. And what often happens, you write freehand. Ideally, you want to write all of these things. You want to write with your hands, like pen, paper or pencil and paper versus typing, because your brain uses a different neural circuitry when you type versus when you write. And that's why I like when you go to the grocery store and you make a list on a post-it, you lose the post-it, but you still remember everything versus when you type, it's harder to remember, right? And so these are just various exercises that can help you get into your future self. And so to wrap up therapeutic writing, what it is, it's four days, 20 to 25 minutes when you write about a traumatic event. What you will notice is that on day two or three, you have a surge of these potentially
1:06:19 Speaker 03 negative emotions and then somehow it just irons itself out by day four. This has been very helpful in many populations. It's been studies hundreds of times. It's a strategy used by Dr. James Pennebaker, a psychologist at Vanderbilt. And it is shocking how many ways this has been effective. And I would say like, finally, I've shared a lot of strategies in our conversation today. The rule of two is what you really want to think about as you are bringing your most goal into your life, as you're thinking about which one of these strategies do I want to try? The rule of two is how your brain makes change happen, Dan. So change, even positive change, is a stress on your brain. This is why New Year's resolutions fail.
1:07:03 Speaker 03 And it's because we say like, oh, I'm going to do all of these things, right? Like these 10 or 15 things, I'm going to bring them into my life. And chances are by end of January, early February. You're doing zero or maybe one. It's simply because your brain needs to adapt. There has to be a period of adaptation for you to bring in something into your life, something new. So even positive changes of stress to your brain. So aim to do two small things at a time. If you want those changes to stick, anything more and your system gets overloaded.
1:07:34 Dan Harris? That's really helpful. And also just to say to listeners, Jamie Pennebaker, the aforementioned researcher who came up with therapeutic writing, he's been on the show and I'll drop a link in the show notes. My wife and I interviewed him while we were in the process of making our own little journal. Two questions I ask habitually as these interviews wind down. The first is, is there something you were hoping we would get to that we haven't gotten to?
1:07:58 Speaker 03 No, I just want to really commend you on your, like how well you keep time and the flow. And I mean, we all know you're a pro, but you're a pro.
1:08:10 Dan Harris? Thank you. I appreciate it. I have no other marketable skills, so thank you. I appreciate that. And then finally, if you wouldn't mind, can you just remind everybody of the name of the book and any other resources you're putting out into the world, websites, social media, et cetera, et cetera. So if people want to learn more from you, they can.
1:08:28 Speaker 03 Sure. The book is called The Five Resets: Rewire Your Brain and Body for Less Stress and More Resilience. It's available in 35 countries and 15 languages and counting. You can follow me all over social media at Dr. Aditi Nerurkar. That's at D R A D I T I N E R U R K A R. And my website is fiveresets.com, fiveresets.com.
1:08:56 Dan Harris? Awesome, Dr. Nerurkar. Thank you.
1:08:59 Speaker 03 Thank you so much, Dan. It was such a pleasure and truly a full circle moment for me.
1:09:07 Dan Harris? I'm really glad you took the time to do this.
1:09:12 Dan Harris? Thanks again to Dr. Aditi Narorcar. That was an awesome conversation. If you want to chat about it, come on over to danharris.com where you can connect with me, one another, many of my guests, my team. You can also do live sessions with me where I guide a meditation and take questions. Come check it out. Just before I go here, I want to thank everybody who worked so hard to make this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our production manager. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.
1:10:01 Speaker 01 OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.
Previous How To Be Sanely Ambitious | Behind the Scenes with Dan and DJ Next How To Get Past Your Past | Yung Pueblo Page updated November 3, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
