Book Extract-Dr. Aditi Nerurkar The 5 Resets: Rewire Your Brain and Body for Less Stress and More Resilience

Stress becomes unhealthy when it’s dysfunctional and out of tune with the frequency of your life.

Stress has a bad reputation but is actually a healthy biological phenomenon that helps us tackle life’s many demands. It simply becomes problematic when it’s out of tune with the frequency of our lives, result¬ing in burnout, fatigue, sleep disturbances, and many other physical symptoms. To bring stress back to healthy levels, Dr. Nerurkar offers her five science-backed mindset shifts for when life gets hard:
The First Reset: Get Clear on What Matters Most
The Second Reset: Find Quiet in a Noisy World
The Third Reset: Sync Your Brain and Your Body
The Fourth Reset: Come Up for Air
The Fifth Reset: Bring Your Best Self Forward
Dr. Nerurkar illuminates why our everyday attempts at being ‘resilient’ – like multitasking, sleeping less, and undergoing huge lifestyle overhauls – aren’t beneficial to our stressed brains. Instead, she prescribes practical, real-world solutions for our modern-day perils that are time efficient, cost-free, and can be applied to anyone’s life, including following the Resilience Rule of 2 (making no more than two changes at a time because doing more is unsustainable), accepting that multitasking is a myth (our brains are wired to do one thing at a time!), and adopting her Bookend Method (creating boundaries).
The five mindset shifts, along with fifteen proven techniques, offer you a road map to change your relationship with stress, bring your biology back into balance, and feel calmer right now.

The extract has been taken from the introduction to the book and is published with permission from the publishers. Read on. Ideally, buy the book. Mull over the ways suggested in rewiring yourself especially to manage stress and anxiety in a modern world.

Dr. Aditi Nerurkar is a Harvard physician, speaker, national television correspondent, and host of the podcast Time Out with Eve Rodsky. She is a lecturer at Harvard Medical School in the Division of Global Health and Social Medicine and serves as the Codirector of the Clinical Clerkship in Community Engagement. She has spoken at the Forbes 30 Under 30 Summit, the Harvard Business School Women’s Conference, and other events.
One night in May, I got a call from my invincible longtime friend Liz.
She was in a panic.
“I’m not sure what’s going on with me,” she confided. “I’ve com- pletely lost my motivation to work out.”
Now for most of us, a resistance to exercise is everyday life, but for my friend Liz it was a true reckoning. Since the first day I met her, more than twenty-five years ago, she’s jumped out of bed every day at 5:30 a.m. to exercise. She’s run ultramarathons, done Ironmans, and climbed literal mountains. She exercised her way through grad- uate school, a twelve-year marriage, and two pregnancies. She’s like a Marvel Comics superhero. Liz’s superpower has always been her insane physical prowess. So when she called me that night saying she hadn’t exercised in six months, my antenna went up.
“It’s not like I lie on the couch all day and mope,” Liz told me. “So it’s definitely not burnout. You know me. I’m resilient.”
I stayed quiet and listened, but as a Harvard-trained doctor with an expertise in stress and burnout, I recognized what I call the re- silience myth—the idea that putting your head down and powering through rough times is what resilience is all about (see Chapter 1). I could hear the familiar voice of the resilience myth when Liz said, “I’m working constantly. My mind never shuts off. But I can’t shake

The 5 Resets
the feeling of being really depleted. Every morning, I hit snooze on my alarm and don’t exercise at all.”
She sounded more exhausted than I’d ever heard her. “What do you think is going on?” she asked.
My diagnosis was pretty clear. “You have chronic stress and atypical burnout,” I told her.
Of course, she didn’t believe me right away. It took another twenty minutes of my relaying the hard scientific data on stress and then hav- ing her answer some questions I often ask my patients so they can score their stress level, from 1 (low) to 20 (high); see Chapter 1.
Despite her history of invincibility, Liz’s stress was definitely in the high range. Together, her three symptoms—an inability to unplug from work, feeling depleted, and a stark change from her usual exer- cise habit—pointed to the picture of chronic stress and burnout. By the end of our conversation, she was convinced.
“How do I fix this?” Liz asked me. “Nothing I’m doing is working.” My suggestion was a regimen of some simple and actionable life- style changes, beginning with only two changes at a time. These changes were practical and easy enough for her to incorporate into
an already overscheduled life. She could start them that same day.
Three months later, Liz was on her way back to bouncing out of bed at 5:30 a.m. for a five-mile run, and she’s never looked back.
In this book, you’ll find out how and why each of my simple research- backed techniques helped my friend Liz and how they can help you, too. In these current times, stress and burnout aren’t the exception, they’re the rule. In several nationwide surveys people said that the past few years have been the most stressful time of their entire professional lives,1 and more than 75 percent of adults have experienced burnout.2 Stress and burnout are two of the biggest and most universal is- sues plaguing our modern world. The good news is that they’re both fully reversible and can be overcome by using the small, actionable techniques described in this book. Using the techniques, mixed with a healthy dose of self-compassion, you can overcome your stress and burnout in about three months.
This isn’t about the latest fad, fix, or hack to improve overnight. Your brain and body are too smart for hacks; they see right through them. This book offers sustainable, far-reaching, and long-lasting changes, along with a couple of powerful mindset shifts, that can teach you how to reverse your biology of stress for good.
Contrary to what you may have been told, stress isn’t a sign that you’re weak at handling the demands of everyday life or that you’ve failed as a human being. Stress is a normal part of the human experience. I mean, if my invincible friend who seems to be part of the Marvel Universe could feel the impact of stress, then so can you. You’ve been misled by modern society and our current hustle culture that stress is a sign of weakness, an embarrassment, some- thing to cover up and hide at all costs. But stress isn’t the enemy; our cultural perception of it is. Allow me to debunk all of these negative notions about stress for you.
As a doctor, I’ve dedicated myself to specializing in the biology of stress, burnout, mental health, and resilience. I’ve done a deep dive into what stress is and how it can and often does become unhealthy for each of us at one time or another. I’ve uncovered why it goes undi- agnosed and how the current treatments only offer temporary fixes, not long-term solutions for any of us.
Here’s the secret that the multibillion-dollar wellness industry doesn’t want you to know: life without stress is biologically impossi- ble. Forget those false promises you might have read or seen that tell you that you can magically get rid of stress forever if you take this or try that product. That’s false advertising!
Stress is one of life’s great paradoxes. It’s the most common expe- rience we can have as humans. But instead of unifying us, it isolates us, making us feel alone in our struggle. While running a stress- management clinic in Boston, I saw this play out every day, one patient at a time. But when I was invited to speak to large inter- national audiences about my findings on unhealthy stress and my science-backed techniques to reset it, I fully grasped the vastness of the stress paradox.
I’ve had the opportunity to communicate with tens of thousands of people from all walks of life about the impact of unhealthy stress and burnout on mental and physical health. No matter where in the world I’ve shared my work about stress with people, I’ve found one very astonishing similarity. Regardless of their country, age, or occu- pation, each person’s stress concerns were almost identical. Whether a factory line worker in Asia, a CEO in Europe, a tech programmer in Silicon Valley, or a childcare provider in North America, the one thing they all had in common was how they defined their concerns with stress. They grappled with the demands of their roles at work; their commitments as parents, caregivers, and partners; and most of all, how the shifting expectations of their daily lives affected their men- tal and physical health. In my experience, these patterns have been remarkably similar across a variety of cultures, sometimes down to the precise wording of the questions I’m asked about overcoming an individual’s stress experience.
We may each have a personal stress story, but after conversations with thousands of people all around the world, I’ve uncovered and summarized five universal truths regarding stress. Chances are, if you’ve struggled with your stress these past few years, then you’ve experienced at least one—but very likely all five—of these universal concerns.

1. I feel anxious when faced with uncertainty, and I struggle to control my emotions during difficult experiences.

Introduction 5
2. I don’t feel rested in mind or body and spend most days feeling depleted.
3. I have so much stress that I accomplish very little, yet at the same time, I feel too burned out to be productive.

4. I have so many roles to fill between work, family, and community that I have little sense of myself anymore.

5. I don’t find any purpose and meaning to my life while I face so many personal or professional struggles.

If one or more of these five concerns resonates with you, it may seem like your life has been taken over by stress.
The truth is, stress is a natural part of your life, as much as feel- ing hunger or needing to sleep. Stress is in fact an important default pathway in your brain. It’s deeply tied to your lived experience and so essential to being human that it’s the very foundation on which your brain, body, and biology are built. Stress isn’t the enemy. It’s what makes you, you. It’s the driving force that gets you up out of bed every morning and propels you forward throughout the day.
Chances are, everything good in your life was created because of a little bit of stress. You graduated and got your first job as a result of healthy stress. It helped you start a new friendship with your cur- rent best friend. When you’re rooting for your favorite sports team every season, a little healthy stress is involved. It has even helped you take your favorite vacation and plan for the next one. Healthy stress has had a guiding hand throughout your life in big and small ways.
A healthy amount of stress is important because it’s an adaptive response to life’s many demands. It serves a functional purpose to move your life forward, but only when it’s dialed to the right fre- quency for you. The key is to figure out just how much stress is too much stress for you.

Stress becomes unhealthy when it’s dysfunctional and out of tune with the frequency of your life. When stress starts having a life of its own and becomes a runaway train, that’s when it gets difficult to manage and contain. This type of runaway stress no longer serves a beneficial purpose in your life. It becomes counterproductive and can end up being harmful to your health and well-being.

My goal is to help you reset your stress, learn how to manage it using healthy boundaries, and eventually master the skills and techniques needed to decrease your unhealthy stress so it doesn’t consume every aspect of your life. You can’t erase all of your stress forever, but you can get rid of the dysfunctional, unhealthy stress in your life that keeps you feeling depleted and burned out.

The 5 Resets in this book, which I’ve developed through my exten- sive experience in helping people understand and reduce stress, will teach you how to pump the brakes and slow down your runaway, counterproductive stress and reset your brain and body so that stress can serve you, not hurt you. What does it mean to reset your stress? A reset clears any pending errors and brings a system back into optimal condition. As you already know, you can reset a stopwatch, a broken bone, or a computer. This book contains insights, techniques, and principles for how to reset your stress.

Within each of The 5 Resets you’ll find information and easy-to- apply tools that are backed by scientific research and have a proven track record with patients in my professional life, whose stories will illustrate the why and the how of each technique. You’ll find out how to rewire your brain and body for less stress and more resil- ience from the inside out through incremental changes over time. The 5 Resets are:

1. Get Clear on What Matters Most. This reset will get your head in the game by cultivating the right mindset to rewire your brain and body.

2. Find Quiet in a Noisy World. You’ll learn techniques on how to protect your mental bandwidth by minimizing external influences.

3. Sync Your Brain and Your Body. With this reset, you will focus on simple and effective techniques to help your brain and body serve you better during periods of high stress.

4. Come Up for Air. You’ll learn practical and actionable techniques to cement your newfound wisdom into the constraints of everyday life.

5. Bring Your Best Self Forward. This reset will teach you a powerful new language for your brain and body to redefine your relationship to stress.

Within The 5 Resets, you’ll discover clearly defined and manage- able ways to work with your biology, rather than against it, through fifteen specific, research-backed techniques that will help you rewire your brain and body for a whole new level of resilience and far fewer negative effects of unhealthy stress, day by day. How can I be so sure? Because I’ve had the honor of witnessing thousands of patient transformations, and I want you to join the success stories I share in this book.
Perhaps like me, your privacy is important to you. I want you to know that every technique I include in this book can be done pri- vately in your own home, or silently, without anyone around you even knowing you’re practicing a technique to manage your stress or burnout. You won’t need to do anything special, such as set aside extra time, join a gym, or purchase equipment. The techniques are free and simple and will not draw any unwanted attention to your practicing stress management in your professional or personal life. Everything you’ll read in The 5 Resets has one purpose: to help you make huge strides in managing your stress and burnout, cultivating the right kind of resilience and fostering a deep sense of health and well-being.

From combating the burnout of work and parenting, managing the grief of losing someone dear, or the overwhelm that comes from having a new medical condition, I’ve helped many people over the past twenty years navigate the most challenging times in their lives and taught them how to recover and rebuild themselves from the in- side out. Unquestionably, we’ve lived through uncertain and rapidly changing times in the past few years, which have taken a huge toll on our mental and physical health. We’ve faced their harsh reper- cussions on ourselves, our loved ones, our workplaces, our schools, and nearly every aspect of our daily lives, not to mention the overall economy and state of the world. But even if you feel like your life is in shambles, my deepest belief is that you have all the tools within yourself to rise up, meet the challenge of the moment, and become stronger than ever. Your time is now, and I’m going to help you by offering easy guidance that you can follow every step of the way.

I’ll walk with you through each of The 5 Resets so you arrive at your destination with a clear understanding of how stress impacts your brain and body and, most importantly, what you can do to feel better, calmer, and more empowered to take control of your life again. Each technique is a simple, practical, and action-oriented tool to help you outsmart your biology, reset your stress, and supercharge your resilience. I’ve applied all of these techniques to my own life during my personal stress story. I know the benefits they’ve had for me and how they’ve also helped the many patients I’ve cared for over the years. My own journey as a doctor, researcher, and patient (we’ll get to that in Chapter 1) has shown me that at the center of every human story is a theme of resilience. I’ve seen this play out hundreds of times with my patients, and I know there’s a story of resilience within you. Through my nearly two decades of training, clinical work, and research, I’ve had the great privilege of observing the inner workings of human beings up close. I’m the keeper of so many stories that began with stress and pain but ended in perseverance and triumph. If you’ve picked up this book, you’ve already taken the first most im- portant step to less stress and more resilience. You may have spent many days feeling stressed, burned out, and completely depleted. You may be wondering whether you’ll ever get through the dark tunnel of stress and return to a life where you feel more in control and have a better frame of mind. You may not believe me, but I promise that if you follow through with The 5 Resets, your story of resilience is the one you’ll be telling. Just like my friend Liz the superhero, you have the superpower of resilience that’s just waiting to emerge, and I’m
going to help you discover it.