Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: How to Rewire Your Brain to Stress Less and Relax More | Mental Health E301

Episode Date: July 29, 2024

Believing that "pressure makes diamonds," Dr. Aditi Nerurkar endured grueling 80-hour weeks as a medical resident. One day, she felt a sudden pain like wild horses racing across her chest. Thinking she had a heart condition, she underwent tests, but her doctor revealed stress as the culprit. This drove her to investigate its underlying causes. In this episode, Aditi explains the science behind stress and resilience, sharing practical strategies to manage daily pressures and improve mental well-being. Dr. Aditi Nerurkar is a Harvard physician and stress expert, co-directing the Harvard Medical School Clerkship in Community Engagement. She authored The 5 Resets and has been featured in the New York Times and Oprah Magazine. In this episode, Hala and Aditi will discuss: - Good stress vs. bad stress - The ‘amygdala hijack’ and why it matters - Breathing techniques to help you relax - The danger of toxic resilience - How to win the battle against digital overload - The truth about multitasking - Tips for better sleep - The genius of ‘fake commute’ for remote workers - How to switch from stress mode to relax mode - Rediscovering childhood passions for balance - And other topics…  Dr. Aditi Nerurkar is an internal medicine physician and public health expert focused on stress, resilience, and mental health. She is the co-director of the Harvard Medical School Clerkship in Community Engagement. Aditi developed a unique clinical practice in stress management at Harvard’s Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital, using evidence-based integrative approaches to tackle complex medical illnesses. Her new book, The 5 Resets, offers practical strategies to overcome stress and burnout. She is a sought-after speaker and her work has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Oprah Magazine. Connect With Aditi: Dr. Aditi’s Website: https://www.5resets.com/  Dr. Aditi’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aditinerurkar/  Dr. Aditi’s Twitter: https://x.com/draditinerurkar  Dr. Aditi’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/draditinerurkar/?hl=en  Dr. Aditi’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/draditinerurkar/  Dr. Aditi’s YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1uE02l88h_cPamRRyLS9SQ  Resources Mentioned: Dr. Aditi’s Book, The 5 Resets: https://www.amazon.com/Resets-Rewire-Brain-Stress-Resilience/dp/0063289210  LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass, Have Job Security For Life: Use code ‘podcast’ for 30% off at yapmedia.io/course.   Sponsored By: Shopify - Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at youngandprofiting.co/shopify  Indeed - Get a $75 job credit at indeed.com/profiting  BetterHelp - youngandprofiting.co/betterhelp Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap Youtube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new Entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship podcast, Business, Business podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal development, Starting a business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side hustle, Startup, mental health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth mindset. Mental Health, Wellness, Psychology, Stress, Resilience, Health, Productivity, Mindset, Life Balance, Self-Healing, Motivation, Sleep, Time Management, Personal Development, Work-Life Balance, Productivity, Motivation, Self-Improvement, Goal Setting, Mental Health Podcast

Stress is the great equalizer. But the goal of life is really about making sure that this stress can serve you rather than harm you. Resilience and stress go hand in hand. Every single society has some concept of toxic resilience because it's a manifestation of hustle culture. Multitasking is a myth. It's a scientific misnomer. There's actually no such thing. Life is noisy in 2024. How are we going to quiet down the noise? It's just about... Welcome back to the show, young improfitters.

Today we have a very important topic. We're going to be covering stress and burnout. As entrepreneurs, we are even more stressed than the general population. We deal with more uncertainty and unpredictability. We have a lot of dependency on our clients, our customers, our employees, our families are dependent on us. We're also more socially isolated. On top of all this, we're very passionate.

And passion is a double-edged sword. The more passionate you are, the more emotionally dependent you are on your work, where every failure seems like a personal failure, a personal setback. And so as entrepreneurs, we're more prone to stress. In fact, 25% of entrepreneurs believe that they're burnt out right now. So I'm bringing on Dr. Aditi Neurocar to the show to help us reverse our burnout and stress. She's an expert on the topic. She's a doctor and author, a TV correspondent.

short a new book called The Five Resets. I can't wait for this conversation. It's so important to take care of our mental health, young improprieters. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Dr. Aditi Neurokhar. Hi, Aditi, welcome to Young Improfiting Podcast. It's such a pleasure to be here, Hala. I'm so excited for this conversation. I actually have been studying mental health and business for the past few weeks.

I just had this webinar this past Wednesday where I was sponsored by BetterHelp, and I covered things like neurodiversity, in entrepreneurship, mental health and entrepreneurship, stress, burnout, relationships. And I had so much fun studying for this. And I had wished our conversation was just a little bit earlier. But I'm doing it again next week. So I'm like, whatever I learn from a DT, I'm just going to put it in the presentation and use it. So I can't wait to just learn from you today. So my first question to you is just to really understand how stressed are we all? How stressed are we as a society? I know we're just coming out of the pandemic. So can you help shed some light on this?

We are seeing unprecedented rates of stress and burnout right now, Hala. As a doctor, I've known that stress and burnout has always been something that people certainly come to me and other doctors about. But the statistics are staggering right now based on lots of different sources and data from different touchpoints here in the U.S. and abroad. We're seeing rates of 70 to 74% of stress and burnout, and that number is slightly higher in those who are entrepreneurs. That's like saying in a room of 30 people,

21 people are struggling with stress and burnout. So if you feel this way and you're an entrepreneur, you are not alone. It is not your fault. And there is a way out based on what we're going to talk about today. Amazing. And to your point, entrepreneurs feel so stressed out.

And I personally believe one of the reasons why it's one of our strengths is that we're so passionate, right? But being passionate is actually a double-edged sword because we then really tie ourselves with our work. We are our business. So then anytime there's any sort of stepback or failure, we feel like it's a personal failure rather than a failure in our business.

And so it makes us more and more stressed out. So I can't wait to hear so many of your strategies. I read your book. It was so good. But first, I want to talk about how stress is actually not necessarily a bad thing. You say there's good stress, there's bad stress, and you call it a biological phenomenon.

that has actually helped us evolve as humans. So can you explain that to us? Yeah. So when you and I and everyone else, when we say, I'm so stressed or it's been a stressful week, what we're describing is the bad kind of stress. But in fact, there are two kinds of stress, like you say. There's good, healthy, productive stress.

And then there's unhealthy, bad, dysfunctional, and unproductive stress. The good kind of stress, scientifically, we call that adaptive stress. And the bad kind is maladaptive stress. stress. So examples of good, healthy stress, what are they? It's when you start your own company or when you're a new founder, that excitement that you have, or rooting for your favorite sports team, buying a car, graduating, expanding your team. There are so many examples of healthy stress in your life that help drive your life forward, help you get excited, get up and take on the day. But when that good healthy stress gets high, out of balance,

off kilter, and it really starts going haywire, that's when problems can arise. And that's when it transforms to unhealthy stress. Like you said, because we have those two kinds of stress, the goal of life is not to live a life with zero stress. It's actually biologically impossible. You need a little bit of healthy stress to get up in the morning and take on the day, whatever your day may be, whether you're an entrepreneur or not. But the goal of life is really about making sure that this stress can serve you rather than harm you. So it's not about zero stress. It's absolutely impossible to have zero stress in your life. You need a little bit of stress, but it just needs to be in balance. And that's the goal. Yeah, I want to get really nerdy and talk about

what actually happens to us biologically. And I think I want to start this off by understanding what is the purpose of our nervous system? Well, there's two kinds of nervous systems first. you have the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. These are just big scientific words, but we'll break it down. So your sympathetic nervous system is fight or flight. Your stress response lives in your sympathetic nervous system. It's governed by a part of your brain called the amygdala, which is a small almond-shaped structure deep in your brain.

And in scientific terms, we call this your reptilian brain or lizard brain, because it's that part of the brain that hasn't evolved the way the other parts of the brain have. And your amygdala is what powers and drives your stress response. And so that's what the fight or flight or sympathetic nervous system does. The goal is survival and self-preservation. It's about keeping you safe. And so when that amygdala is on, that is the sense that you feel, that feeling of survival. And so what's happened now, the purpose of the amygdala and the sympathetic nervous system,

your fight or flight system, evolutionarily, it was to keep you safe. So when you face a tiger in the forest, you know, when we were all cave dwellers back in the day evolutionarily, you would face a tiger in the forest and you would fight the tiger or you would flee. That's what the fight or flight response is. But now all of these tigers, these metaphorical tigers aren't this one moment in time and then you have a moment of rest. It's these things that just never go away. So for entrepreneurs, funding issues, challenges with growth, challenges with meeting the demands of consumers. all of these business issues that people are facing, they're happening at a low hum in the background at all times. So that amygdala is just on at all times. And your amygdala needs a break. Your brain and your body both need a break biologically to be able to thrive. And so we can talk a little bit more about that entrepreneurial mindset.

You know, I had a clinical practice in Boston, which is like the entrepreneurial capital of the U.S. So I had lots of patients who were entrepreneurs. and just what do you do and how do you manage to be able to be a successful entrepreneur, but protect and preserve your mental health in the meantime? Yeah, I can't wait to talk about some of your strategies to reverse stress, reverse burnout. But I want to understand more about the feelings that we get when we're in fight or flight mode, because it's not like we know, like, hey, my parasympathetic nervous system has turned on.

You don't know that, right? So our parasympathetic is actually the good stress, is that right? Or where you want to be? Well, the parasympathetic system, whereas the sympathetic, what we talked about, fight or flight, the parasympathetic is rest and digest. And the good news is that both systems can't be on at the same time. It's like a light switch. So when one is on, the other is off, it's mutually exclusive and the other is on, the other's off.

So what you're aiming to do with time is to get out of that sympathetic amygdala mode, and back into that parasympathetic rest and digest mode, where other parts of your brain are taking over again, that part of the brain that takes over is called the prefrontal cortex. Again, long scientific word, if you put your hand on your forehead, it's the area right behind your forehead.

And that prefrontal cortex is what adulting is all about. It governs memory, planning, organization, strategic thinking. It's ideally what entrepreneurs, like they want a really strong prefrontal cortex. when you're an entrepreneur or a worker in any capacity, whether you work for a large corporation, whether you're at home and work from home. So there are so many reasons why you need that prefrontal cortex. And what happens with stress and burnout is that the amygdala hijacks the functions of the prefrontal

cortex and drives the train. And what you want to do is you want to slowly through various things that you can do to reset your stress during the day, you can get that prefrontal cortex back into the driver's seat. So you're making good decision. So you're having that forward thinking and strategic thinking. One of the biggest things that happens when you are feeling stressed is that you often get in your own way. And you are so stuck in the here and now in that immediate sense of survival.

It's not you. It's not your fault. There's nothing wrong with you. It's actually how your biology is built. Because like we said, the amygdala is all about immediate needs survival, self-preservation. It cannot think about a future. It's all about what's happening in the here and now. And that's why we want to dial down the volume of the amygdala.

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. So I know one of the big concepts in your book was about resilience. And you say that resilience is really dependent on stress. So I'd love to understand your definition of resilience and how stress plays a part. Yes, resilience and stress go hand in hand. When you think about what is resilience, the scientific definition. is that it's your innate biological ability. So we all have it.

And it's that ability that you have to adapt, to recover and grow when life throws you a curveball or you have a challenge. Now, resilience doesn't function in a vacuum. You need a little bit of stress, that healthy positive stress for resilience to show itself. What happens, though, is that that word resilience, you and I hear it and others who are listening to this conversation

may hear the word and have a visceral response. because it's gotten a really bad rap over the past several years. The word resilience is a positive connotation, but it feels very negative when you hear it. And the reason it feels negative now, you're like, oh, don't tell me to be resilient. It's because that definition has changed and morphed societally. We've moved away from true resilience towards toxic resilience.

And so what is true resilience? True resilience, it's like I said, it's your innate biology. We all have that ability to be resilient. It honors boundaries. It honors your human limitations for rest and recovery. And it really focuses on self-compassion and leaning into that versus toxic resilience. Toxic resilience is when you and I hear the word resilience immediately you cringe.

That's toxic resilience. It's a mind over matter mindset. It's productivity at all costs. It's like all systems go all the time. It's the energizer bunny here in the U.S., you know? Just keep going in the UK. keep calm and carry on. Every single society has some concept of toxic resilience because it's a manifestation of hustle culture.

And so I hope that the entrepreneur is listening, what they take away from our conversation is that you can be resilient and you can still get burnt out. That's called the resilience myth that people think, oh, I can't be burned out. I'm so resilient. Those two things because what you're likely living through is this idea of toxic resilience. because we've been taught from a really young age that resilience is about tolerating a lot of discomfort, but that's not actually true resilience. And so I want to dismantle that idea of resilience as being toxic

and rather lean into your true resilience, which really honors your need for rest and recovery. Because then that is how your brain, you know, newsflash that your brain really needs rest and recovery, to be productive and to really be functioning at its optimal level. Well, I found out from reading your brain, your book that a lot of your passion for stress and burnout actually came from a personal experience where you were in a very toxic place in your life. You were in residency. You're working 80 hours a

week and you were so stressed that at one point you thought you had a heart condition. That's right. Yeah. Talk to us about that time in your life. What were you going through and how did that bring about your passion to start figuring out how to recover from stress and burnout? I was a medical resident It's similar to entrepreneurship. You are just on and working 24-7. I worked 80 hours a week, like you said, and saw death and dying on an everyday basis, things that no me or mortal should see.

We in medical residency, you see it. And back then, 25 years ago when I was in training, no one talked about words like self-care or self-love or boundaries. There was none of that. And so I was taught in my medical training early, early on, I mean, talking like the second year of medical school, I was taught that pressure makes diamonds. That was

the mantra we were taught. And so anytime I was in a situation that was difficult or I'd done a 30 hour shift and I was really tired, anytime I said, oh, I want to rest. I would say no, no, pressure makes diamonds and I was a diamond in the making. And then my diamond cracked. And it cracked one fine day out of the blue, I was rounding, I was in the cardiac ICU, I was the senior resident, I had just finished a really brutal call where we had a lot of patients that we admitted to the hospital, and I was finishing up in the morning, just checking in on every patient before I headed home, and I suddenly felt like a stampede of wild horses across my chest. Never happened before. It felt like, you know, knocked the wind out of me. I sat down immediately, profusely sweating.

The nurse and I, she and I had worked together a lot. She gave me some orange shoes, and I drank get quickly and then feeling passed within seconds. And we both kind of laughed it off. And then I got up and I kept working. Which just goes to show you how much you are indoctrinated with this idea of pressure makes diamonds. That feeling of the stampede of wild horses never happened again at work, but it happened almost every night as I was going to bed for weeks and weeks until I finally hit that point of thinking, okay, I need to go see someone, a doctor. So I went to go see a doctor and they did the medical tests and checked my heart and echo cardiogram, like a heart ultrasound, EKG, all of the blood test, anemia, thyroid, electrolytes, all of that.

And everything checked out fine. And so my doctor was lovely and she said, oh, everything's great. Big reassuring smile. It's probably just stress. Just try to relax. I know it's hard. I've been there, medical residency. And just like, you know, or should me out of her office.

So what I got was relax more. I'm like, okay, relax more. I went to movies, hung out with friends. I was single at the time now, married and a mom. I went out. I was still working 80 hours a week. I didn't have a ton of time. But I did what I could.

I had dinners with family and friends. Retail therapy, went to a spa, took a vacation. I did all of these things to try to relax more, but nothing really worked. And the only thing that worked was when I put my scientist hat on. And I was like, okay, I need to figure this out. stress, brain, body, like, what is happening to me? Why am I feeling like this? And then once I read all of those studies, because I had access to all of the literature and the science. So I started reading all of the science and the studies of what happens to your brain and your body when you're

feeling stressed. Why am I feeling this way? Because my first reaction, to be honest, when she said, you're probably just stressed. My first reaction, I scoffed. I was like, oh, come on, stress doesn't happen to people like me. I'm resilient. Again, because I was, living that resilience myth, right? So then I slowly, over three months, started following through the science, I started putting into practice all of the things I was learning. And then I found my way out of stress. And when I found my way out of stress, that's when I said to myself, I want to be the doctor that I needed during that time. So my response to a stress patient wouldn't be, oh, just try to relax more. Very well-meaning, but not helpful at all. I want to dig into that

a bit. What was the problem with your doctor saying, hey, just relax? Again, not her fault. It is not a personal failing of physicians. I am a physician. It's simply that stress is seen in society as this magical, mythical, creature with vague, no boundaries and just, oh, try to relax because no one really understands stress and understands, oh, you can actually do things to help you change your brain and your body for less stress. You can work with your brain and your body. The medical system, our conventional medical system, doesn't address stress head on simply because doctors do not have the time to talk about stress with their patients. One study that I did early in my medical research career, there was a study early on that showed 60 to 80 percent

of all doctors visits have a stress-related component. So people like me who go to their doctor saying, I think something's wrong with my heart. And then they do the full workup and say, no, no, it's just stress, right? So 60 to 8% of doctors visits have some form of stress-related component to it. And yet, only 3% of doctors actually counsel their patients for stress. And so when I did that research and discovered that huge gap, I wanted my work to close that gap. And so the reason that doctors don't necessarily counsel patients for stress, again, not a personal feeling. Doctors would love to. But to be a good doctor in terms of primary care, doctors have to work 27 hours a day to fulfill the basic requirements of their job. And no one has 27 hours

a day to do their work, right? You have to sleep. You have to eat. You need to spend time with your family. And so there are impossible, impossible demands placed on doctors to do all of these things that are well outside the bounds of what a regular human can do. And then in addition to that, so that's my stress often just falls on the wayside. Because if you're thinking about, you know, a patient's cholesterol and cancer screening and heart disease and which meds they need and what referrals they need, it's like I call it the doorknob question. You know, like when someone's hand is on the doorknob, like anything else? And it's like, oh, actually, I am kind of stressed. And then you say, I'll just try to relax. Again, no one's fault. It's just the way the system is designed.

And then the other thing is just that stress as an entity isn't really well understood. I think one of the biggest ideas that I want to share is that stress can be quantified, just like blood pressure, and we should start treating it like that, so that we can do certain things and then measure it. Your audience, entrepreneurs, are all about data and metrics and measuring things. And so there's a way that you can measure stress. There's a quiz that I have in the Five Resets, my book, that you can measure stress and then try a couple of things, and then every four weeks, check your stress score again

and see if it decreases, because we should start thinking about stress like blood pressure in the same way that you do certain things to lower your blood pressure, and then you keep monitoring. Let's hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors. At Yap, we have a super unique company culture. We're all about obsessive excellence. We even call ourselves scrappy hustlers. And I'm really picky when it comes to my employees. My team is growing every day.

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that the doctors are prioritizing like you're saying. But if we just address some of these root causes, we'd all be a lot better off. So I want to understand from you some of the big aha moments that you had when you first started looking at your own stress and trying to reverse your own stress and burnout? What were some of the big things that you were like, oh my gosh, this is such a big finding. I can't wait to share it with the world.

I think the aha moment that crystallized my future, my forward path and career was just that, wait a second, I'm stressed. All of these things are happening to my body because of stress. And then, oh my goodness, I can do certain things in my day to day to reset my stress. That was out of the bounds of anything I had even considered first that I could get

stressed because I was resilient. I was living the resilient Smith, which is resilient people don't get stressed. We're superheroes. But in fact, that is not true. We are all just simply mere mortals and your brain and your body need rest. And so if you're working 80 hours a week and not having any time to decompress, that medical resident journey is very similar to an early stage entrepreneur. even a middle career entrepreneur who's just working constantly thinking, oh, this is how it has to be.

I'm resilient and I'm going to just keep going and going until you hit your breaking point. And so that was my aha moment that you could come out of stress by doing really simple things consistently. So five or ten minutes every day, I would do a few things. So I started prioritizing a 10 o'clock bedtime. study show that the hour between 10 to 11 is considered the golden hour for sleep for lots of things, cardiac, mental health, well-being. And so I prioritized sleep and really focused on a 10 p.m. bedtime. I started setting a bedtime alarm. 9.30 was my bedtime alarm. It went off and it told me like, okay, I need to wind down. Back then, we didn't have smartphones. I'm kind of a dinosaur. We had flip phones. And so I have to shut down everything and say, okay, it's time for bed. That was. one of the first things I did. And then once I started prioritizing my sleep, everything changed. And then I started learning breathing techniques. So I talk about some of these breathing techniques in the Vive Resets, but understanding that your breath, that was a big aha moment for me, understanding that your breath

can be connected to your stress and that when you modulate your breath and do different sorts of exercises to help with your breathing, you can decrease stress. And the reason for that is that your breath is the only biological process in the body that is under voluntary control so you and I can do a breathing exercise and we can do it together and breathe in for a certain count and breathe out for a certain count. And then when we stop focusing on our breathing, it just happens naturally, involuntary. So it's the only process in our body that's under voluntary, involuntary control, different from your brainwaves or your digestion or any other bodily process. And that is why your breath can often be that light switch between on and off between the sympathetic system,

fight or flight, and getting you back into rest and digest. Because when you're in that sympathetic mode, when you're anxious, your breath is short, shallow, and you're doing this thoracic breathing. So you're doing, you know, it's up here in your chest. And when you are feeling rested and relaxed and not stressed, your breathing is coming from your belly, deep belly breathing. It's slow, deep deep. relaxed. And so that was a big aha moment because I started focusing on my breath throughout the day. What was interesting for me for my personal journey is that I didn't jet off for six months to Bali and do this amazing holiday, even though I would have loved to. To this day, I'm like, sign me up for that plan. I continued working 80 hours a week, continued my residency and just

kept going, but brought in a lot of these things. And over time, it still worked because I was able to reset my biology and the brain and the body. Just like your entrepreneurial audience, it's not like you have to abandon all these plans that you have. It's just about paying a little bit closer attention, changing some routines you may have. And so that was another big aha moment. And then I've continued to have a lot of aha moments. I think another really big aha moment was as a doctor, I would see patients. So I would understand one on one what was happening with patients. And even in my crowded waiting room, I would notice that there's this stress paradox, which is this idea that people are all suffering with stress. 70 to 74% of people in the UK, one study showed 90% of people.

So you can kind of say that everyone, you and I together today are struggling with stress and burn down in some capacity. Of course we are. We're just regular people living in this world and at this time in life. But when I would notice that in my waiting room, no one was talking to each other. We're all facing stress and burnout, but the paradox is that it's a universal thing that's happening, and yet we are completely isolated in the experience, which is wild. And another aha moment was on a much bigger scale when I started giving talks. So when I started speaking to audiences of 1,000, 10,000, 20,000, 50,000, then I noticed, oh my God, this stress paradox and the stress and burnout that people are feeling that I would see one on one in the waiting room when you see

patients, it was happening on this huge scale. Really, I kind of understood, wow, this is a universal problem that people are facing across ages and genders and types of jobs people have and where they live. Stress is the great equalizer. So good. And I want to take a moment and just move away from the signs for a second and talk about your career because the best business ideas come about when you're solving your own problems. And you talked about how you wanted to be the doctor that you didn't have when you were a resident, right? So talk to us about how finding this passion of wanting to help people with their stress has actually changed the trajectory of your career. That's a great question. I never really thought about this as a career path. I know that early, early on people would

read my long emails and say, you're a great writer. And I thought, okay, cool, what am I going to do with that? I'm a doctor. And what was interesting is that my journey now, so I was a regular doctor, I never wanted to go into stress and burnout. I just was a internal medicine resident, taking care of patients in the hospital, diabetes, strokes, heart disease, that sort of stuff. And my personal experience changed introductory in my life. So I started then focusing, you know, when I finished, when I got out of that stress struggle myself, and I wanted to become the doctor I needed. So I went to a fellowship. It was in Boston at Harvard, focused specifically on stress and burnout and how to bring those in, the mind-body connection, how to bring those into regular

conventional medical care based on the research I did. And then I think what's happened to me is it's been very organic. And then I started doing more talks and speaking. I think when doctors, often, and you might notice this with any entrepreneurial group, what often happens is you are in your own silo, like it's an echo chamber and you're in your own place. During the pandemic is when it really hit me because I would share things with my friends and most of my friends are not doctors. And I'd say, you know, because with stress, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'd say, you know, because everyone knows that. And they would say, what? What did you just say? No one knows that. You need to write about that. And I thought, come on. Of course everyone knows.

So I had to like almost give myself permission to say, oh, really? Not everyone knows that study because you forget. You know, you've been doing this for decades. You're like, oh, everyone knows this stuff that I know. And then I started writing more about it. And then believe it or not, I never really wanted to write a book. My patients used to ask me when I would counsel them and write out my things for them. They would say, Dr. Rooker, you really need to write a book about this stuff.

Really? you don't really realize what you're sitting on in terms of your own information or guidance. And then it's almost like my audiences asked for it. So when I would give talks, then everyone was like, have you ever thought about a book? Now the book is available in 15 languages and 35 countries and it's a bestseller and people are reading it. And of course, there's that connection to the material and the book because stress is this great equalizer. and we're all facing stress. So my own journey really was just very naturally unfolded.

It was very organic. It's funny because a lot of people reach out to me to ask me, how did you become a Harvard doctor? How are you doing your TV stuff now? How did you write a book? And it wasn't like I had this grand plan at all. And I just continue to evolve based on what the need is. To me, in fact, Hala, it feels very similar.

When I'm speaking to a patient, I don't see patients currently when I'm speaking to a patient and that aha moment that the patient has, that light bulb moment of, oh my God, I feel so good, I understand what you're explaining now.

That is why I do what I do for that sense of mental health to be accessible to everyone. That's why everything in the five resets is free. Nothing costs money because I've had patients who've had lots of varying resources. And so that light bulb moment

is what I live for. And it's kind of the same thing when you're talking to a large audience, when you're explaining the science in a way that's simple, that someone can say, oh, my God, I'm going to try that today, yes. And it just so happens that it's not in a waiting room. It's a group of thousands of people. And so when I do my TV work, same thing, same concept. To me, it doesn't feel all that different, though I think to others it feels like vastly different. I love your story. I feel like it's very inspiring because I know a lot of people who are in jobs where they're a doctor and a lawyer and they want to be entrepreneurs,

but they feel like they're stuck because they went to school for so long. But entrepreneurship really allows you to use all your skills, all your passions, allow you to become your full self. Because here you are doing things that you're good at, being a doctor, curing stress, speaking, writing. And now you get to do all those things that are uniquely your skills and put it out to the world. And I'm sure, do you feel like you are living a much more fulfilled life because you've taken the leap to become an entrepreneur and not just hold yourself to just being a doctor? Yeah. What a great question. I really do feel like there are so, so many doctors or lawyers.

It's a career track because you go to school for so, so long. And it's this idea of, okay, I'm stuck. I'm often the informal career counselor for so many of my doctor friends. and colleagues because so many people are feeling stuck and feeling like there's no way out. I would actually say to people that resonates, and you might be at a job for like 20 years in a company and you're trying to make partner or whatever it may be, and you're like, oh, I just feel so stuck. It's not really a departure. So when I made this pivot, it wasn't a departure for me because I was still using all of those skills. So nothing is really ever wasted.

So the connection, you know, the skills of building rapport and the therapeutic connection that I made with patients, I just translated that into the written word. So then I wrote about that. I connected with my reader or when I do my TV segments, I connect with the audience because it's a skill that is so transferable. And especially if you are in a profession like medicine or law or if you've done something that you've studied for many, many years, chances are, every skill that you have learned, you can use it in another way. And so, yes, to answer your question, I feel deeply fulfilled now in a way that I didn't before. I think for me, my early, early years, when I was 18 years old, and I was at Barnard, which is the Women's School of Columbia for college, I really wanted to be a journalist. I was so hardcore wanting to be a journalist.

And my parents were immigrants and Indian doctors, and they were like, oh, you're going to be a doctor to follow the lineage of the family because my grandparents were doctors, my uncles and aunts were doctors. And at the time, I was like, okay, they know best. I'll be a doctor. And I ended up falling in love with the human body and the workings of the body. But really, I went into medicine because I loved the human story. And I love that connection with people, which is what I wanted to do with journalism anyway. And then I found my way to journalism, right? I found my way to health communication. So if you are feeling stuck, I get that. It is real. But it's more have a message to you and a signal rather than a life. It's not like you have to say, okay, it's my

life sentence to feel stuck. You can get out of it, but it really just takes small glimmers. You don't have to just shift your whole life. You can make small changes to a little bit every day. The other couple things that I'm hearing you say was somebody feel stuck is what are all the things that people are telling you you're good at? Like your patients were saying, you're such a good writer and you started doing some speeches and you were getting really good feedback. Those are clues of like what you should start dabbling in or even thinking back to what you used to enjoy when you were a kid or be good at when you're a kid, right? So a lot of people don't even know where to start. Those are the places to start. What is everybody complimenting you on? That's not even

your day job. Yeah. It's one of my first resets in fact. In the book, I write about this one patient in particular, but it's uncover your buried treasure and uncover your childhood treasure. So Carl Jung, who is a philosopher, talked about this idea of what do you do that makes the hours pass like minutes and what did you do as a child that made the hours past like minutes? For me, communicating, so whether it would be like talking to a patient and explaining something, educating, that was always something that felt really easy to counsel someone, to educate someone, to show them the information and explain it in a way that simplifies complex scientific information. And so there are so many skills like that, write it all down because I think for me, in hindsight,

I'm like, huh, maybe if I had written down all of those things, like you say, it's a great idea to gather all of those things that people are saying and just write it down. Like, good writer, good communicator. And then you're like, okay, what do I do with this? Yeah, love it. Okay, so this is a great transition. I want to spend the rest of the interview talking about your new book. It's called The Five Resets, Rewire Your Brain and Body for Less Stress and More Resilience.

So can you first talk through us at a high level your five resets? What are they? The five resets, it's a roadmap, and it helps you get you out of that here and now and amygdala, high stress, and into a better mental state. So we can go through each of those resets. There are five of them. In those five resets are about 15 science-backed strategies. Everything is based on the science.

So the first reset is get clear on what matters most. Again, it helps you get out of that immediate survival mode and towards a thriving mode. And of course I talk about the amygdala prefrontal cortex in it, but really it's that idea of switching your brain and resetting it away from the amygdala to the prefrontal cortex. The second is find quiet in a noisy world. We talk a lot in that chapter and that reset about figuring out a way to protect your mental health while still remaining an informed citizen and a productive member of society. But how can you carve some quiet in this hyper-connected world, particularly if you're an entrepreneur?

The third reset is to sink your brain to your body. It's about the mind-body connection. We spoke a little bit about that, about the breath and how the breath can help get you centered in the here now, but there are several other strategies. The next is about bringing your best self forward. And so how can you bring your best self forward? What are some of the things that you can do to help bring your best self forward? Come up for air is another one. That really focuses on creating pause and bread throughout the day simply because we are moving at a frenetic pace right now. All of us are in every industry. And again, based on what we talked about earlier, Hala, it's a myth to think that you

are going to be able to continue on and on. An example that I give in the book with a patient is an entrepreneur because I've had many patients who've been entrepreneurs. And one question I often ask my entrepreneurial patients is, what is your end game? People are going on all cylinders and they're not really thinking about the end game or they are kind of thinking about the end game, but not about how what they are doing now is going to serve the end game. And so if your end game is longevity or just physiologically, if you just want to live to a ripe old age of like 90 or 100, or your company, if you want to have longevity with your career or in your company

or if you want to sell it and then start another company, whatever it is that you want to do, thinking about the end game and beginning with the end in mind is important, particularly when it comes to your mental and physical health. and stress and burnout, because if you want that endgame and if you want that longevity, there's certain things that you're doing now that are not actually serving that end game. So the fourth reset is come up for air, and then the fifth reset is to bring your best self forward. So all five resets are a roadmap to get you to that endpoint.

It doesn't necessarily mean that you have to follow each reset in that order. you can read the book and decide which one really speaks to you at this moment. But I would say start with the first reset because it's really important to have a roadmap. You know, when you know where you are headed and you have a map to get there, it just makes it easier for you to get out of your own way, which is a lot of what stress is. So let's stick on the first reset. It's called Get Clear on What Matters Most. And you say that you need to know your end game.

I love this. And remember I was telling you about this BetterHelp webinar, I actually realized that when I was thinking about what stresses people out? And I was like, I think a big stressor is that people don't know what they want. And so I'd had everybody do this activity to think about their future you. Imagine yourself in five years and then think about the things that you need to do now to get you to that place. And then how are you going to schedule that in your life and make sure that it actually happens? I read your chapter and I was like, wow, this reminds me a lot about the exercise and the thought process that I was trying to get people to do.

talk to us about the end game. Why is it important to know what you actually want to be less stressed? I love that framing of the question. And when it comes to my question of what matters most to you, we often have these things like the work that you're doing thinking, okay, from the business standpoint, where do you want to be in five years or where do you want to be in 10 years? The five year plan, the 10 year plan, we all have that. But what I would suggest is before even getting to that five or 10 year plan, because you're feeling so stressed and you can't even think because of your amygdala, you can't even think about next week or next month, let alone five years from now, right? Because when you're feeling that sense of stress and burnout, your amygdala is on high alert. It's all about immediate needs and survival.

So think about where you want to be in three months or two months. And instead of thinking to yourself, what's the matter with me? Like, why do I feel like this? What's the matter with me? Think about what matters most to you and create a most goal. So most is an acronym, M-O-S-T. M is what's a goal that you can achieve in three months that's motivating? O is it objective.

S is it small and T is it timely and something that you can actually achieve. And I have had patience. I give lots of examples in the book, The Five Resets, but there are so many examples of most goals. Some patients have said, I want to have enough energy to start to organize a church social. Another one said, I want to sleep better so that I can finally have the wherewithal to get a new job because I'm not sleeping well. I feel depleted and I then can't look for a new job. Others have said, I want to write a children's book once I finish getting out of my cancer therapy.

The range of those answers of what matters most to you is huge and vast. This is not an existential question. And it's not like, what's the meaning of life and what's your purpose in life? Because that feels so, so big. It's simply, what do you want to achieve in the next three months when it comes to your mental health and stress and burnout? Do you want more energy? Do you want to feel less fatigued? Do you want to focus better, better concentration?

Do you want to be more productive? Do you want to feel a greater sense of well-being or joy or less burnout? Burnout, that word we use and we throw around. But actually, there's like a million flavors of burnout. So some people feel hypervigilance with burnout. now. Others feel very lethargic. So name something that you feel is getting in the way of your day-to-day life and focus on that and then understand that it takes eight weeks to create a new habit for your brain and that your brain falling off the wagon and getting back up and falling off

and getting back up is part of the habit formation process. That's how your neural wiring, your brain connections and circuits form and give yourself eight weeks to start. And then take the stress score, you give yourself a stress score, take the quiz every four weeks, and over time you'll start decreasing your stress. But when you have that most goal, then you know what you're working towards, rather than this vague, ambiguous thing of, I want to feel better, I want to have less stress, I want to be less burned out. But what does that actually mean in your everyday life? How does it show up for you in your everyday life? So another activity, since we're talking about exercises, and you brought it up earlier, it's find your buried treasure.

And I just love this because I feel like, especially as entrepreneurs, a lot of us self-identify with our work. We are our work, like I was saying before. And we've got to be more than just our work or else we're just not going to be balanced. So talk to us about this exercise and how we do it, why it matters. I love this exercise. And the genesis of this exercise actually came from several of my patients, but also one of my colleagues, my doctor colleague. I remember once it was like a Tuesday afternoon. We were swamped with patience and we were finishing up our charts.

And he says to me, oh my God, it's only Tuesday. I can't wait for Saturday. Can't wait to play the guitar on Saturday. And I said, oh, you are having a concert? Are you going to be performing with your band? And he said, no, I just can't wait. I usually play my guitar on Saturdays. And I said, oh, but what do you mean?

Like I was so confused because he was clearly stressed and burned out, finishing his charts. I said, oh, do you have to go get the guitar from someplace? Like, asking all of these follow-up questions. Why Saturday? What's the deal with Saturday in playing your guitar? It was Tuesday. And he was, like, really spent. And he said, no, like, that's just my day for to play guitar. And I was like, oh, do you rent a studio? Like, many follow-up questions. And he's like, no, it just, what do you mean? Like, he looked at me like, Saturday is my guitar day. Well, why don't you just play tonight when you get home? And he looked at me like I was nuts. And I was like, why are you waiting for the weekend to do something that you love?

I mean, just play for five minutes when you get home today. And he was like, wow, I never thought about that. And so he did. He played the guitar that day and felt immeasurably better the next day. And he came in on Wednesday morning. And he was like, Aditi, that was amazing. I can't believe you suggested this. I played my guitar for five minutes.

It totally felt so great. It made me feel like I was playing for an hour. And it was so interesting because I thought, wow, He's been withholding a sense of joy and pleasure that he could get every single day. Again, not a lot of time. Five minutes. He's been playing the guitar since he was very young,

loves it, feels such a sense of purpose and meaning and joy from guitar playing, just a couple of songs. But he saves it for Saturday so that he can work all week and not have that joy. It was baffling to me. And I've had so many similar stories with patients

where they're like, oh, I love, I don't know, whatever it is, yoga. Or I love painting. Oh, but I can only do that on Sunday. But what do you mean? Why can't you just have a little thing that you just doodle or just paint when you come home from work for like five minutes or when your kids are asleep? I don't understand.

And then it was that idea of like, oh, wait a second, hang on. Again, it's the resilience myth. It's this idea that we have to tolerate lots of discomfort rather than leaning into our joy. And so, again, doctors are all about power. pattern recognition. That's how we diagnose things. So for me, recognizing patterns and stress and burnout, it's the same as recognizing pancreatitis or heart disease or whatever it may be because I've been doing this for so long. So it was like, oh, this is a pattern. I see what's happening here. It's the resilience myth. You're rearing its ugly head. And so find your brain your treasure is simply

that. That's the genesis of it. But simply think about one or two activities that you did as a child that brought you lots of joy, like Carl Jung says, that made the hours pass like minutes and figure out how to bring them into your day. So I give an example in the five resets of one of my patients with end-stage cancer who loved making clay figurines. And so she would hang out outside on her stoop growing up with her sister and they would make little clay figurines. So when I saw her in a consult, I was like, can you go to the art store and pick up some clay figurines? So of course, know, same reaction. What do you mean? Why? Why would I do that? She's a high-powered lawyer. And again, it's this idea of doing something simply for joy's sake, not to get ahead, not for an award,

not because someone's going to see it, but simply because it brings you joy. For me, it's art. For me, it's also yoga or being in nature. I mean, there's so many, you know, it has to be easy and accessible. It doesn't have to be this huge thing, just something small that you can do every single day at the end of the day or at the start of the day or during your lunch break or whatever it may be. So it's a way to find your brain treasure and then it connects you to that part of yourself. So what happens scientifically, not to get all scientific, but it gets you into the state of flow. And when you do something like that, like whether it be guitar playing or painting or anything that you enjoy writing, the reason that that expression of making something that you're spending

hours on past like minutes, it's because it gets you into a state of flow. And the same thing, state of flow for your brain is very therapeutic and healing. It signals a cascade of lots of neurotransmitters and hormones and other things in your brain to help decrease stress and burnout. So that's the scientific reason for it. But science is sometimes boring and people don't want to hear the science. And instead it's like find your buried treasure, find something that you love doing as a child that you can do just for five minutes again. Well, you just inspired me to make sure I start singing every single day. Every day, Hala. my whole life. And sometimes I'll just burst down to song, but I feel like I'll make a point

that I need to just start singing every day. Yeah, schedule it in during lunch hour or you have a break. We all have natural breaks in our day. So whether you are a working parent, you might not have kids and you might be caregiving in some capacity. I understand that we all have our work. We have our caregiving responsibilities. Life is very, very full and busy. But there are natural moments in the day when you can sing. Sing in your car. If you drive to a place, actively schedule it in to sing. That's the other tip is that when you're trying to find your buried treasure, it's not like suddenly an hour of time is going to free up for you in the day and then you're going to suddenly during that time say, oh, I should play my guitar. I should sing. Of course not. That's not how life works.

You have to schedule it in. So schedule it in every single day. The reason you want to do something new every day, and like that's why I said to my colleague, about the guitar playing or to my patient with clay building for you with singing. It's because when you are learning something new, it's easier to do it every day rather than once in a while because you avoid decision fatigue. That's how your brain works. So if you're like, oh, I'm going to start a fitness regimen or I'm going to sing, I'm going to sing Tuesdays and Thursdays at this time.

Chances are something's going to come up on Tuesday and you're not going to do it. And then Thursday, same thing. And so instead, if you just say to yourself low-hanging fruit, I have to practice my singing for five solid minutes. Dr. Nurgar told me it's like doctor's orders for five minutes every day, then you will, then you'll fit it in. And then that's how you create a habit

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Quo. No missed calls, no missed customers. You've got a second reset called Quiet and a noisy word. Now, we are full of distractions. Tech, social media, everything is distracting us. Life is noisy in 2024. How are we going to quiet down the noise? The key with this reset is digital boundaries.

And particularly when you are an entrepreneur, when you're hyper-connected, of course you want to be an informed citizen of what's happening in the world. You want to look at trends and market reports and all of the things that what's happening in your industry, but not at the expense of your mental health. health. And so often what happens is you are always on the go. You're so stressed with your work. And in addition, during your downtime, you are scrolling headlines and news and social media to see what's going on. These are not benign things. They have a direct impact on your stress response and your amygdala and how your brain functions. And it worsens your stress. So instead, digital boundaries, what can you do?

At night, when you're going to bed, keep your phone off your nightstand. I know it's radical, but it works. Keep it away. So first thing in the morning when you wake up, you are not checking your phone because that has a influence on your brain cascade and all of the hormones and neurotransmitters. Keep it in another part of the bedroom. I'm not saying, again, this is not about becoming a digital monk. It is simply about decreasing your reliance on your devices. In fact, studies show that it's not abstinence that works for mental health and well-being when it comes to technology, but rather decreasing your reliance. So that's the first balance. The digital boundary is geographic. Keep your phone off your nightstand. And when you're working during the day, to decrease that sense, I call it the primal urge to scroll because it's your amygdala.

When you're scrolling, what you're doing is the same thing that cave dwellers did when you would have that night watchman scanning for danger while the tribe slept. Now we are all our own night watchmen. So when we feel that sense of stress and hypervigilance and feeling unsafe,

which is what the amygdala's job is, you scroll. You scroll your headlines. You scroll the news. You scroll because it's like, am I safe? Is everything okay? you scan for danger. And so how do you quiet that amygdala and how do you decrease? It's your

primal urge to scroll. It's a form of self-preservation. You keep your phone out of arm's reach. If you work in a cubicle in a drawer, so you're not looking at it so that you get that prefrontal cortex and take over again so you're more intentional. So that's another boundary. And then another digital boundary that you could do is try grayscale. I use the grayscale all the time. In fact, I can show you right now. I have it. automatically on my phone, what it does is it switches my phone to black and white. And there's a way that you can program that. Your audience is very tech savvy, of course.

Grayscale is essentially moving your phone away from color to black and white. And since our phone is our primary news consumption device, and it's especially helpful at night when you are sitting on your couch after a long day's work and you want to go to bed early because we talked about 10 o'clock bedtime. But who actually goes to bed at 10? you're usually going to bed at midnight or later. Why? Because you scroll and then, you know, you finish your two hours of mindless scrolling and you're like,

what was that? What was the point of that anyway? Because it's not actually helping your brain. It's not decreasing your stress or burnout. And so instead, what you could do is set grayscale. And what you do with grayscale, there's a couple of different steps to get into grayscale. It decreases your screen time because it makes scrolling less interesting and less enticing for your brain.

And so you're like, oh, I don't, really want to scroll here. It's kind of boring and I'm just going to go to bed instead. And so that's another way to create some quiet. I work in journalism. So this is not about censorship. You want to be an informed citizen. These are troubling times in the world. You want to know what's going on, but not at the expense of your mental health because you want to make sure that your cup is full, that you are rested, that your brain and body are rested so that you can continue to serve in the way that you're serving through your work. Yeah, I've had an especially hard time this year because I'm Palestinian, 100%. For me, social media is extremely triggering right now. My whole feed is just

gruesome and dismembered bodies and little kids dying every day, every day for nine months. One of the things that I would say about that, Hala, it's that studies have found that it increases your risk of PTSD. So it's not just that something happening thousands of of miles away. It's not about like secondary PTSD, but in fact, consuming just like you're describing Hala, graphic videos and content and images has a direct influence on your amygdala on your brain, so it can influence just consuming these graphic videos and images can increase your risk, your personal risk of PTSD now firsthand PTSD and studies have also shown that it can worsen your risk of health conditions later, years later.

So all the more reason to, of course, you want to be an informed citizen during these difficult times, but you also want to protect your mental health. Yeah. I'm just trying to balance with all that. It's hard because I need to know what's going on and report what's going on kind of. And man, I just hope this nasty, nasty, I don't want to call it a war, but whatever it is ends. And then you have, you know, the election is coming up. People are feeling a sense of hypervigilance with that. The past few years, the past four or five years, the reason we are all feeling this way is because there is no respite. We finished the pandemic and then we've had a racial reckoning. Then we had several climate disasters. Then we've had humanitarian crises.

Now there's an election coming up. So this news cycle and things happening in the world, because we are so hyper-connected to everything at all times, there is no respite. It's just one onslaught after the other. And so what's often happening, I describe it in the five resets. I talk about how your brain is like a dam. And so right now, many people are feeling worse than they ever were. And it's years after the pandemic, because we were promised after the pandemic, everything is to be normal.

Everything's going to be great. But that's not how the brain works. Every headline showed that. And I would actually look at those headlines and either roll my eyes or laugh because I was like, that is so not how their brain works. Your brain is built like a dam. And so what happens is when you are going through an acute crisis, you shore up your internal reserves. Once that crisis passes is when the dam breaks.

You feel psychologically safe. Your defenses come down and the dam breaks. I've seen this over and over with my patients with cancer, for example. They get the diagnosis of cancer. They're seeing their oncologist, radiation therapist. They're getting chemotherapy, et cetera. They're seeing me in my office. They do not shed a tear.

they finally finish their treatments, get a clean bill of health, and their oncologist says, great, congratulations, your cancer free, come back in six months for your checkup. They're in my office the next day, weeping. And they're confused because they're thinking, wait a second, I should be celebrating. How come I'm crying? I didn't shed a tear during the treatment. It is because when you feel psychologically safe and that acute crisis is over is when the damn breaks and your true emotions emerge.

Similarly, what many of us are. feeling now? If you ask people like, how are you feeling with your mental health? People are actually feeling worse now than they did back in 2020 or 2021 when we were in lockdown during the pandemic. Of course, there was struggle and people were struggling then too. But the reason is because a lot of those pent-up emotions are coming up to the surface now coupled with all of the things that are happening in the world. So if you are feeling a sense of stress and burnout, it's a very human reaction to what's happening first biologically with the dam breaking and also what's happening all around us and what's coming up for those of us who live in the U.S. with the election and what that could mean.

So eye-opening everything that you're saying, the fact that your mind is a dam and you don't even realize this stress you're in in the moment and it really just happens and hits you later. So thank you for helping me through that. We talked a bit about the mind and the body. The last question I want to ask you on is really about productivity because we're all working really hard as entrepreneurs. And I really loved a phrase that you had in the book called monotasking. I'm actually going to steal this from you because I love it so much. And I know multitasking is the worst thing we can do.

Multitasking is a myth. You make errors when you multitask. You really can't multitask effectively. So talk to us about monotasking and how is it related to stress. Multitasking is a myth. It's a scientific misnomer. There's actually no such thing. When you multitask, you are doing two things at once.

It's called task switching. You're not in fact doing two things at once. You're doing one thing and then the other thing in rapid secession back to back. And your brain is really wired to do one thing at a time. So what happens with multitasking or task switching? Multitasking or task switching weakens your prefrontal cortex. Remember that part of the brain that we talked about at the start of our conversation, which is about strategic thinking and planning and memory and organization and all these important

things. Multitasking or task switching, it decreases your productivity ironically, decreases your cognition, your memory, your attention, all of these things that you think multitasking is not doing. So the antidote to multitasking is actually monotasking, doing one thing at a time. And the way you monotask, I laid out in the five resets because that's a very common question I get. It's like, how can I do one thing at a time? I live in a world where 10 things are expected of me all at once. So you can focus on time blocking as a technique. And that is simply, let's say you have four tasks to complete in an hour.

Spend 10 minutes on task one, take a two minute break. Spend 10 minutes on task two, take a two minute break. And on and on. So as you move through, you're not doing all four tasks at the same time. Again, biologically impossible. You can't actually do that. That's not what your brain is doing anyway. And when you do monotask,

or time blocking, it preserves your mental health, it preserves your prefrontal cortex, and increases your productivity, believe it or not. And tell us about the fake commute, because I feel like so many entrepreneurs work from home especially. I definitely wanted you to share this one. Fake commute is what I do really suggest it. So when you think back to your days of being quarantined or even when you're working from home, your brain needs compartmentalization. think back pre-pandemic when very few people were working from home. You would go to your office and then you would come home and the commute serves two roles. So first, just getting you from point A to point B. But it also serves a psychological role. It gets you out of home mode into work mode.

So now that 80 plus percent of people, they prefer hybrid work. That's the new model. The future of work is hybrid. And that's a wonderful thing. It helps with stress and burnout. It increases your autonomy and productivity and lots of things, but you are losing your commute, your everyday commute. So how can you keep that brain compartmentalization with the commute, but also have all of the benefits of hybrid work? You can fake your commute. So on the days that you're working from home, for five or ten minutes, set up your workstation, head outside, take a walk, check your schedule, go through what you need to accomplish for the day, let your brain transition out of home mode to work mode at the end of the day. Repeat the process. It's a way to preserve that sense of brain

compartmentalization because we are all different, right? Our home mode is so different from our work mode. Especially when you're working from home, it's really important to create some boundaries and even with your brain to create some compartmentalization. So the fake commute is just a way to do that, but still have all of the benefits of working from home, but you just need, your brain just needs a time, like a buffer time to transition. Well, Aditi, this is such an awesome conversation. Thank you so much for all your time. I learned so much. Where can our listeners learn more about you? and everything that you do. You can follow me on social at

Dr. Adidina Rukhar.com at D-R-A-D-I-N-E-R-K-A-R-K-A-R. You can also check out my website, 5-resets.com, number 5 resets.com. Amazing. Thank you so much for your time. Thanks, Hala. Such a pleasure to join you.

Stress, like the good doctor said, is truly the great equalizer. And so, my friends, if you're feeling stressed or burned out, you are far from alone. Remember, in a room of 30 people, 21 are likely to feel stressed and burnt out. But there's a way out. And that does not include having zero stress at all. Stress and resilience go hand in hand. And the right amount of healthy stress will help energize you to face and adapt to the changes you confront. That's true resilience. Not the toxic kind that tells you have to be productive at all costs.

Not a single one of us is the energizer bunny, and everybody needs and deserves rest and recovery. So how can we help reset our bodies and minds during times of stress? Well, Dr. D.T. said, first, get clear on what really matters to you and take small but repeatable steps to get there. Remember, it takes eight weeks to create a new habit for your brain. Second, find your buried treasure.

Pick up that guitar or paint. brush for five minutes and connect with yourself. I know I'm going to try to sing every day, even if it's just in the shower. Next, lean into some monotasking. Switching between tasks decreases your productivity, your cognition, and so much more. Now, I have to say this concept of monotasking as opposed to multitasking has been sort of life-changing for me. It's really helped me level up my productivity and focus and concentration. I use something called the Pomodoro technique where basically it's 25 minutes or 45 minutes of uninterrupted time. I time myself using my Apple phone. I say Siri put 25 minutes on the clock and then I time myself to do a task. And in the past,

I've been pretty good at focusing, but adding this layer of saying, halla, you're doing this monotask for 25 minutes, which means no task switching until that timer goes up. And in your two to five minute break, after you're done with your task and you've done what you said you were going to do, then you can go look at your social media apps. Then you can go check your dating apps

or your stats, your reviews, or whatever the heck. Monotask, do not task switch. Do not multitask. Finally, if you work from home all or part of the time, Try faking your commute. Head outside, take a walk, just 10 to 15 minutes to let your brain transition out of home mode and into work mode or vice versa. I really hope that I could take that advice.

I would love to take a walk in the morning because I'm always sitting at my desk. And I've tried to do that in the past, but I haven't gotten into a routine. So let's try it together, young improfitors. Do you know somebody else who's been stressed or burnt out and could use a little guidance? Well, then why not share the love and the knowledge with them by sending them a link to this podcast? And if you did enjoy this episode of Young and Profiting Podcasts and you learned something, then please drop us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. Nothing helps us reach more people than a good review from you.

And if you prefer to watch your podcast as videos, you can find all of our videos on YouTube. Just look up Young Improfiting and you'll find our episodes there. If you're looking to get in touch with me, you can find me on Instagram or LinkedIn. by searching my name, it's Hala Taha. Finally, I want to give a big shout out to my incredible YAP production team. You guys are amazing. Thank you for all that you do.

This is your host, Hala Taha, aka the podcast princess, signing off.