How to Reset Your Stress Response and Rewire Your Brain for Resilience

Jonathan Fields: [00:00:09] So bit of a trick question. Have you ever felt like you were just drowning in stress? No matter what you tried? That the weight of it all seems impossible. I've been there, you've been there. Turns out we have all been there. This is this thing that we all experience but rarely ever talk to each other about. So today I'm speaking with Dr. Aditi Nerurkar, a Harvard stress expert, on a mission to really help us reframe and reset our relationship with stress. In my experience, we often feel alone when stressed and she validates this experience. It's as if we're the only ones struggling. The truth is, stress touches us all. As Aditi shares, it's a natural and healthy human response, but in modern life it can become overactivated, leaving us burned out and fatigued. And the good news? There are simple daily mindset shifts that we can make to reboot our brains and bodies. No expensive spa or months in Bali required. So Dr. Aditi Nerurkar is a nationally sought after speaker, television correspondent and author of the new book The Five Resets rewire your brain and body for less stress and More Resilience. With over two decades of clinical experience, she offers a bit of a reimagined approach to overcoming stress and burnout, using five science backed mindset shifts rather than preaching toxic resilience, which we talk about, she provides real world solutions tailored to the realities of modern life, and she prescribes time efficient, cost free techniques that are accessible to anyone to help us change our relationship with stress and find balance once more. So excited to share this conversation with you! I'm Jonathan Fields and this is SPARKED. Hey, before we dive into today's show, you know, we've learned that a lot of our listeners are sort of at this moment where they're really exploring the notion of work in their lives and their next moves in their careers.

Jonathan Fields: [00:02:02] And if you are in that place, we talk about the SPARKED and the Sparketypes a lot on this show, this body of work that we've developed to help you really identify what makes you come alive and how to apply that to the world of work. We've heard from a lot of folks that they would also love some help along that journey. If you're curious, you can also find on our website a directory of Certified Sparketype Advisors who know this body of work and can really help coach and guide you through it. So we'll drop a link to the show notes in that right now. And if it feels interesting to you and you just like somebody to help guide you through this next part of your career or work journey, take a look and see if somebody resonates. It might be the perfect fit to help you along this next leg of your journey. Again, that link is in the show notes now. As we have this conversation, we're living in a world where we feel like increasingly, so much of what's going on around us is outside of our control, and there's a level of almost ambient stress that it's become the fiber of our days. And, you know, this has been your work for so many years. I'm curious, what have you been seeing around how we're experiencing life and how stress is showing up, either in a way that you've seen it showing up for a long time or differently.

Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: [00:03:33] It's such a thoughtful question that you start this conversation with, and, you know, our brains and our bodies are designed expertly to handle acute stress. That is what our brains and bodies are born to do. But especially now, we are facing this low hum in the background so aptly mentioned of chronic stress. There is no respite, there is no time for rest or recovery. And it's this cyclical nature. When you look around the world over the past, say, four years, we all went through an individual and a collective period of trauma. We lived through that. We came out of that period. But even coming out of that very difficult time of the pandemic, we didn't ever really have a moment to breathe, to rest, to recover emotionally, psychologically, and even biologically. As we sit today, there are current events in the world and that level of stress we know through the biology of stress that when things are happening far away from you, because of our hyper connectedness, our brains don't really recognize the difference. You can be sitting on your sofa in your living room, and there is a catastrophe occurring thousands of miles away, and it feels like it's happening very close, simply because of our sense of hyper connectedness. And so while our brains and our bodies are adept at managing acute stress in the short term, they do need a moment of respite to recalibrate.

Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: [00:05:14] And we just haven't ever been able to catch our breath and to get back to that sense of equilibrium, simply because we are informed citizens living in this world. And so one of the things that I really try to advocate is this sense of digital boundaries and the importance of digital boundaries. We have boundaries in every other relationship in our lives, whether it be with our spouses or partners, our children, our parents, our friends, our colleagues. Why is it that we have no boundaries when it comes to the relationship we have with the digital world? There is a porous boundary, so it's not so much about renouncing our phones or, you know, headlines, etc. and becoming a digital monk. In fact, the science shows that that is not even really helpful for health and well-being. Decreasing our reliance on these external stimuli is what actually is helpful for our health and well-being. So it's just time to reconsider our relationship with the digital world in a way that can serve us and keep us as informed citizens without compromising and sacrificing our mental health, never at the expense of stress and burnout.

Jonathan Fields: [00:06:29] Yeah, it's such an interesting point because there are things that we can do. We may not be able to necessarily change the circumstances, or at least all of the circumstances, but there are a lot of things internally, and there are things that we do have control over. So I'd love to drop into those resets and spend a little bit of time in them.

Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: [00:06:45] The first reset is find what matters most. Most is in capitals because it's an acronym most. And this first reset lays the foundation of everything that's to come. This first reset has three science backed strategies in it, which help you when you go through these exercises. Get out of that reactionary amygdala self-preservation survival mode and get you into that prefrontal cortex of your brain where you can plan, organize, and have some strategic thinking and solve the complex problem of your stress and burnout. Now, as you read the first reset and go through it, you might not necessarily know or even think that that's what's happening, but that is what's happening biologically. You know, from the scientific perspective, the clinical perspective. The first resets. Big question. It's not about what's the matter with me, it's about what matters to me. Most often when you are feeling a sense of stress and burnout, you can't seem to get out of your own way. Again, not your fault. It's just what's happening. You're focused on immediate survival, self-preservation, safety. That's just the stress response. The first reset helps you zoom out. It helps you take a step back. It helps you figure out where you are and where you'd like to be. It may sound like a big question what matters to you most? And yes, at first glance it might scare someone, but when you go through the exercises, it's actually quite simple.

Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: [00:08:28] I've used this with I've used this with countless patients over the years. Essentially, when you have a destination of where you would like to go and it doesn't have to be a grand, aspirational destination, it can be that I want to throw a baseball with my grandson, and right now I can't because I'm in a lot of pain or I feel stressed. I would like to attend my high school reunion, but I'm not in a place where I can do that. I've had. And again, these are real life examples of patients over the years. I had a patient say to me once she was going through cancer treatment, and when I asked her what her most goal was, what her why was, she said she wanted to be a children's book author, and that was something that she had really wanted to focus on. Most people who are feeling a sense of stress and burnout or, you know, having struggling with the emotional component of chronic illness, which is a lot of the work that I do, they have all of the knowledge and information, and the challenge is not giving people more knowledge and information about their particular condition, because the challenge isn't the knowledge and information, it's the action. There seems to be a wide gap between knowledge and information, where they are to where they would like to be.

Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: [00:09:48] Action. And my job in clinical practice, in the five resets when I speak to audiences is to close that gap so people don't feel this wide gap between where they are and where they need to be. The gap gets closer through the scientific principles and the strategies that I've mentioned in the first reset. And the first reset also helps you create a roadmap step by step by step, to close that gap and get to that. Why? For you get to your most goal initially you may feel what is my most goal, but again, very easy to figure out what your most goal is. It doesn't have to be just one thing. Start small and build up the reason. The first reset is the first reset rather than the second, third, fourth, or fifth reset is because it lays the foundation for everything ahead. It helps your brain shift from stress mode into a more resilient state, where you can then plan to reach. You know that future thinking part of your brain can take over. But if you're living in the amygdala and the here and now, it's really difficult to get to that place just biologically. And so when you have a clear plan, when you have written out your where you are, where you'd like to go and the steps to get there, that's it.

Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: [00:11:10] You know, that's half the battle. The other thing that the first reset does is it helps to normalize and validate your experience. Stress is the great paradox because we are all experiencing this and yet no one talks about it. It's an incredibly it's a universal thing that is happening, a universal phenomenon that is oddly, incredibly isolating. Makes no sense. The reason group therapy works so well is because it is a group of people, ten, 15, 20 people who sit around a room who've all had one particular event that's happened in their life or a stressful experience, and then they talk about it. And when someone else says, oh, this happened to me, and I was feeling this way, and I must be the only one. And someone across the room says, oh, you were feeling like that? I was feeling like that, too. Oh, wow. That can be incredibly therapeutic and healing. It's called the group effect. And what I hope the first reset does, and really all five resets, is that it creates that therapeutic experience. So as you are going through the first reset and going through those strategies, you realize based on very concrete data that you are not alone, that it is not your fault. And these feelings that you're having, it's what everyone is struggling with. So stress in fact, is the great equalizer.

Jonathan Fields: [00:12:29] We don't like to think about that. But that's right. You know it is. It's such a common part of the human experience. It brings us, I think, nicely to the second reset, which is really all about stillness in a world that seems to not want you to be still. You also describe under this reset, sort of the role of social connections, which I thought was interesting.

Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: [00:12:51] So the second reset is find your quiet in a noisy world and social connection is very important. Reason being we are living through a loneliness epidemic right now. The Surgeon General, who happens to be one of my childhood friends, talks about it as a public health crisis. When you look at the data, hundreds of millions of people globally go two weeks without speaking to anyone. And we know that loneliness isn't just, you know, something, a nicety to try to overcome, but it has real physical and mental health ramifications. It increases your risk of heart disease and stroke by about 30%. And especially if you are an older adult, it decreases your lifespan. So loneliness has been found to be equal to 25 cigarettes a day, to smoking 25 cigarettes a day, which is a shocking statistic. And when you compare all cause mortality from sort of the big ones that we talk about, you know, heart disease, cancer and all of these other big things that we consider to be real drivers of mortality, particularly here in the US. Loneliness trumps many of them in terms of its ability to increase your risk of early death. So loneliness and social connection, conversely, is not just something nice to have. It is important for your mental and physical health. Now, the first pushback I often get when I talk about the need for social connection is. But what if I'm an introvert? I don't really need people. I don't really want to engage.

Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: [00:14:39] It's not about becoming a social butterfly. Feeling that sense of social connection is about having a sense of community and tribe. So, you know, ask yourself, are there two people in your life? I typically say anywhere from 2 to 5. Are there 2 or 5 people in your life, the 4 a.m. friend? If something were to happen to you at 4 a.m., could you pick up the phone and call a handful of people? And it's surprising how many people say no. I've had countless patients over my decades of clinical practice when I've talked about social connection, and I've asked the question, who's your best friend? They say me and I see them once every 2 to 3 months. We have one office visit. I asked them questions about themselves. I hold space for them to share their innermost thoughts and feelings. So I understand why they would say that because I am a friend to them. But seeing your doctor every 2 to 3 months and acknowledging that that person is your best friend is challenging in terms of the fabric of society and what we're doing. Because humans are social creatures as much as we are meaning seeking, purpose driven creatures, we are social creatures. That's not to say everyone needs to become a social butterfly. We all have levels of that and thresholds. It's not about going to a cocktail party. It's about feeling a sense of connection and a sense of tribe with others so that you bolster your mental health and physical health.

Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: [00:16:12] No man is an island. No woman is an island. No person is an island, I should say. And so in this particular reset, you know, I tried to shine a light on this idea of we are hyper connected, always on these things, our phones, and yet we are more disconnected than ever. Data shows that Americans particularly, but this is a global phenomenon as well. But this particular data set shows that Americans are more are spending more time alone now than they ever have. And that steep drop happened. There was a steady state of Americans spending time alone and with others. And then that sharp drop happened. Coincidentally, I don't know, a big question mark there. It happened when more than 50% of people got a device. That's not to say that phones are causing us to be isolated. Of course not. I engage in my phone every single day. I communicate with friends and family far away. I have several WhatsApp groups I belong to, a wonderful WhatsApp group of seven of my closest girlfriends from age six, and we give each other, you know, tips on, oh, this is a great show to watch or, you know, try this and try this recipe. Or did you see this celebrity? And like we have lots of fun again, hedonist happiness, but also creating a sense of meaning and purpose and community there. I think that social connection is incredibly important, and I love my phone as a way to build and foster that.

Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: [00:17:46] But certainly, you know, we have to set some limits simply because the science shows that there is a, you know, benefit to in-person connection, but also it doesn't have to feel that hard. If you're an introvert and you hear this data and you think, oh, no way, I'm not going to suddenly start talking to people, you know, on your when you're going to your mailbox, you get your mail, you see your neighbor maybe out for a walk or getting their mail to just say, hey, how's it going? You know, make small talk. There is there was a very provocative study which came out just a few weeks ago that showed that casual conversations with strangers, your barista, where you go to pick up your dry cleaning when you're at the grocery store, at the bank. Casual conversations can have a profound impact on your mental health, so you don't have to go deep. Don't have to have heart to hearts with your close friends. You can just have these light hearted moments of connection throughout your day, and it can bolster your sense of mental health and in turn, decrease your stress and burnout and help your sense of loneliness. Because all of these connections, these touch points, foster a sense of community and community when you feel connected to those around you that we know is a boon for so many things.

Jonathan Fields: [00:19:06] Yeah, I love that. And raising my hand as an introvert, um, it gives me a lot to think on. I love the fact that you're saying, like, this doesn't have to be the big things. Like this can be tiny little touch points along the way, which makes it more accessible for a lot of people. I want to move into the third reset, which is really about the connection between your mind and body, but really bringing home the fact that these are not two different operating systems that function independently. You know, all the research is crystal clear now, this is a seamless feedback mechanism, and we've got to do things that tether them together, that sync them in a way. One of the things that you talk about, I think is really interesting. It's been a long time fascination of mine, and part of my personal practice is the notion of breathing. And I think a lot of folks are like, well, this is just the thing that we do. Like subconsciously it happens. It's part of the autonomic nervous system. I don't control it. And yet we can actually exert control over our breathing, and we can change the way that we breathe in ways that really regulate those two parts of the nervous system that you were describing earlier to make us a lot more functional and healthy, but at the same time, to help us experience that stress, um, in a more easeful way.

Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: [00:20:21] The mind body connection sounds like a woo woo concept. In fact, there is great science to support it. What's good for your body is good for your mind and vice versa. When you do better, you feel better and it's all in the doing. For people who have maybe never heard of the term mind body connection, it is like gravity. It's been working all this time and you just never called it that. But when you fall in love and you get those butterflies, that is the mind body connection. When you're walking into a work meeting and you're about to give a presentation and your face flushes, that's the mind body connection. If you are entering a space and you're excited, let's say you're going to a surprise birthday party and you feel that flutter, you know, that excitement in your body, that's the mind body connection. So we have many moments throughout the day when we feel the mind body connection, but we don't call it that. The reason the mind body connection is so powerful is because it is happening, like gravity around us all the time. To us. And with a few simple strategies, you can influence your mind body connection. The breath is often the gateway to influence your mind body connection, because your breath is the only physiological function in your body that is under voluntary and involuntary control. Your heartbeat is happening right now. You and I are sitting here and our hearts are beating, and even though we can try to control them, guess what? It's out of luck.

Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: [00:21:51] We can't control our heartbeat. We can't control our digestion consciously. We can't control any physiological process in our bodies except our breath. So right now, as you and I are speaking, Jonathan, we're just breathing and chatting and talking and, you know, just our breath is moving and in and out in breath out, breath in the background. But if we both just pause for a second and took a deep breath in, took a deep breath out, suddenly we're influencing our breathing. Our breath is the only physiological process under voluntary and involuntary control, which makes it the most potent way to tap into your mind body connection. And tied to the idea what we had spoken about earlier. When you are feeling stressed, when your amygdala is firing, your sympathetic nervous system is on an alert and you're feeling that sense of hypervigilance and stress. You often take quick, shallow breaths. It's a physiological response. Evolutionarily, the fight or flight. Is designed to fight tigers in the forest, so blood is shunted away from your vital organs to your muscles. Your pupils dilate so you can see things better. Your heart starts pumping fast, so the oxygen in the blood can move to your muscles to either fight or flee, and you start breathing quicker to get that oxygen level up all throughout your body. However, when you are feeling calm, rested, rest and digest system, the prefrontal cortex is working.

Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: [00:23:25] You're in a state of flow. All of these things that we've talked about, tying those ideas together. Your breath is slow and deep, not really coming from your chest, coming usually from your stomach. Babies are born with the ability for diaphragmatic breathing that is, deep belly breathing. When you look at babies and how they breathe, you see how their bellies rise and fall. And sometime as we are growing up, we lose that ability to naturally diaphragmatic breathe. And diaphragmatic breathing is simply belly breathing. But diaphragmatic breathing, that deep belly breathing is actually tapping into your parasympathetic response because it's actively moving away from that short, quick, shallow, anxious breathing back to that deep breath. So that is why the breath is such a potent tool of minimizing your stress and burnout in the moment. Because of this ability to do turn on and off, and the fact that you can control your breathing and focus on some deep belly breathing exercises, which I offer in this reset. But it also over time, when you continue to practice these breathing exercises, and some of them are honestly three seconds and some are a little bit longer, a few minutes. When you do these incrementally over time, throughout the entire day, you tap into your mind body connection and you start influencing your mind body connection to serve you rather than harm you.

Jonathan Fields: [00:24:56] That makes a lot of sense, and I love that it is accessible and available to all of us and free. So this is something that we're all walking around with and we can do, you can do in a cab, on a subway, at a dinner table, like while you're literally having a stressful conversation with somebody else without them knowing it. You know, you can drop into these things. So I love the availability of this to basically anyone.

Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: [00:25:20] I'm so glad you brought that up, because the two sort of tenants that all of the resets, the five resets, and the 15 science-backed strategies have been centered around is that every single thing in the five resets is free. Because I have as a clinician, I have had patients with all varying levels of resources, and so I'm particularly sensitive to that. Of course, I have my patients who can afford fancy spas and retreats and take six months to surf in Bali and feel better. And then I have my patients who work three jobs and would love to be able to have a surfing holiday in Bali for six months, but it's just not in the cards at the moment. So it was exceedingly important for me that everything in the five resets was science backed. Of course, since I am a physician and driven by the data, but most importantly, free. That is like so, so important to me. And then the second tenant for me that I've really centered my work around is that everything can be done in the privacy of your own home or at work or wherever, but no one is going to know. There's a sense of discretion also, because I've had many patients who are high powered people or have jobs that require them to be forward facing in some way, shape or form. Many of us have jobs where workplaces, you know, if you say, hey, I'm going to just do a 15 minute meditation, I'm going to go in that room and I'll be back. Um, that's not really looked upon favorably. So in the moment, things have to be, you know, you have to be able to do certain things like these breathing exercises.

Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: [00:27:03] That's a great example. And other strategies in the five resets, you have to be able to do them anywhere. So one exercise. So there are several breathing exercises I offer. But one particular exercise, stop breathing be is a three second exercise. It taps into your mind body connection. It helps you get back into diaphragmatic breathing and it can literally reset your stress in the moment. But also when you practice it repeatedly over time at baseline. And the stop breathe be method is very easy. You stop, you breathe, take a deep breath, and you be focus on your feet, on the floor. Put your mind where your feet are. Initially when I was starting, stop, breathe and be. I would do this in a busy clinical practice wearing a white coat, and I would whisper it to myself under my breath as I knocked on the door. There were people all around me. No one knew I was practicing. Stop. Breathe me. As I got better, I didn't have to whisper that to myself, I could. Just say to myself internally, stop, breathe and be. It was a moment to feel grounded, create a sense of calm and presence before I entered the room. Because when I would enter the room, I would hear the story the patient was wanting to share, and it would often cause a lot of stress for the patient. You know, your help wanting you're there to serve and to help. And so stop, breathe, be was my way of tapping into my mind body connection for the first time.

Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: [00:28:25] It was the gateway exercise for me to learn about the mind body connection, because at that time now I am a seasoned meditator. I've been meditating for 20 plus years, but at the time I was not a meditator. The thought of sitting still for 5 minutes or 10 minutes was excruciatingly painful and uncomfortable to me. It was certainly something that I have worked up to. Now I can meditate for 40 minutes now, but it has taken 25 years. So stop, breathe and be was my way to tap into my breath, mind, body, connection and to my sense of presence in the here and now. So that is the first strategy in this reset because it sets the stage again. Many people have never heard of the mind body connection. Sounds very woo woo. How do you tap into it? I have a stressful job. I have three children. I have lots of demands on my time. How am I going to be able to do this woo woo stuff living in my life? And so again, you know, these strategies can be done right in the middle of your messy, overscheduled, chaotic life. You can practice, stop, breathe, be in your workplace and it will work because it's the science of stress. And like we talked about, you know, when you are focusing on your breathing and getting that deep belly breathing, it triggers a different reaction and cascade of chemicals in your brain and your body that directly offset the cascade of reactions that are happening with the fight or flight response.

Jonathan Fields: [00:29:59] Yeah, it makes so much sense. I do want to touch on the final two resets. Also, the fourth one you describe as coming up for air, and I feel like to a certain extent, some of the things that we've talked about also play into this. But you also speak to the notion of monotasking. And I think a lot of us have heard, you know, how multitasking is not necessarily the badge of honor that like it once was held up to be. But maybe we don't really understand how it affects us on a psychological and physiological level.

Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: [00:30:28] It's one of my most common questions that I get about multitasking and monotasking. So multitasking is a scientific misnomer. There is no such thing when you are multitasking. What you are essentially doing is task switching. You're doing two separate tasks in rapid succession, even though 100% of human beings, including me and likely you, think that we are excellent multitaskers, only 2% of human brains effectively can multitask. So what does multitasking do? And unfortunately, our modern world, and particularly the workplace. But even home life and parenting is built on multitasking. It's really considered a badge of honor. Multitasking weakens cognition, memory, attention, and your productivity, ironically enough, because you are multitasking, thinking it's making you more productive when in fact it is not. It also weakens your prefrontal cortex, which is the area of the brain right behind your forehead that we've talked about quite extensively weakens your ability to solve complex problems in the world. I don't know about you, but life for me is filled with complex problems that I'm trying to solve. As it is for many people. We can't really afford to multitask. And so the question I get is, okay, you don't want me to multitask, I get it. So what am I supposed to do? I have a slack channel. I have emails that I have to do. I have four projects that are the priority. Everything is a priority, right? Instead of multitasking, the antidote is monotasking doing one thing at a time.

Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: [00:32:04] But in our modern life, with work and parenting and just life in general, monotasking doesn't seem to even make sense. How can you use this science and apply it to your everyday life, which is chaotic and overscheduled and just messy? You can begin monotasking in your work at home, wherever, by focusing on a technique called time blocking. And time blocking is how I wrote the five resets. Time blocking is how I manage my entire day. I learned time blocking in medical school, when I had to consume vast amounts of information and retain information, and I just didn't know how else. And so essentially, time blocking is focusing on one task for a short amount of time start at five minutes at the end of that five minute period time it. By the way. Like set a timer. I explain step by step. Set a timer at the end of that five minute period, take a short walk or get up and stretch. Do something intentional 30s a minute, then start your second task again. Five minutes build up and then take a break again. And so it's task break, task break, task break. Start at five minute increments. Move up to ten minutes. Over time. Maybe you'll get to 15 or 20 minute increments where you can sit and focus. What you will notice is at the end of that hour, instead of multitasking and doing those four projects all at once at different times in the tabs are popping up and you're responding to emails, etc., which weakens productivity, cognition, memory, attention, all of the things we talked about because you are.

Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: [00:33:45] Quote unquote, task switching, not multitasking. There's no such thing. Instead, when you mono task in that one hour, you have completed four tasks. You might not have completed them fully, but you've certainly made headway on all of your projects. You have given your brain a sense of a break in between, and we can talk about biologically what that does. And you have preserved your brainpower and the prefrontal cortex. So now personally, I can mono task for 45 minutes at a time, and then I take a 5 to 10 minute break. I never go past 45 or 50 minutes, I would say. But when I started, I could only mono task for five minutes because there was that pull of like, I have to do all of these things. I can very proudly say, I used to wear the proud badge badge of honor, that I was a multitasker. Knowing the science and knowing what I know now, I can very proudly say that I wear the badge of being a reformed multitasker and truly owning my monotasking abilities. It is so easy to get sucked back in, of course, so you have to stay vigilant. But there are so many benefits to monotasking and it can be incorporated into a busy, overscheduled life.

Jonathan Fields: [00:35:02] Yeah, I love that.

Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: [00:35:02] The importance of taking breaks and the reason why monotasking and time blocking is so important, and giving yourself that break between tasks is because the science has shown that breaks aren't just a nice to have these breaks, so anywhere from 10s to ten minutes can decrease the cumulative effect of stress throughout the day. And it changes your brain. And, you know, brain studies with brain scans have found this.

Jonathan Fields: [00:35:28] That makes a lot of sense. I love the the idea of time blocking. It's something I've started doing just in the last few years. I moved away from the quote to do list, and so my schedule now looks like there are blocks of time, but those times have very particular projects or tasks assigned to them. And like you, I started smaller. And like over time you just sort of like it's like building the muscle. I feel like you build the muscle to be able to sort of like push it a little bit longer and longer and longer, but and agreed, I may think that I'm being effective past about 45 minutes, but at the end of the day, I kind of know that unless I've taken a break, unless I've snuck something in there, you know, I may be looking at my screen and my fingers may be typing something in there, but you know, it's not what it needs to be. I just need to kind of like check out for a little bit. And I think that brings us nicely also to the fifth and final reset, bringing yourself your best self forward, which also feels a little bit like the accumulation of a lot of what we've been talking about, but with some additional ideas in there. One of the things that you talk about under this reset is the notion of expressive writing or expressive journaling, and it is really fascinating to see there's a very, very strong body of replicated science behind these practices that show how profound the effect can be, which I didn't realize until fairly recently.

Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: [00:36:41] Expressive writing. Again, you know, all of these strategies that I talk about in the five resets I have used myself when I was going through my stress struggle. As a early medical trainee, I have taught many patients, and expressive writing is one of them. It has a robust amount of literature to support it. James Pennebaker is a psychologist who developed the technique. Expressive writing or therapeutic writing is essentially for four consecutive days. You sit down with a pen or a pencil and a paper, and you set a timer for 20 to 25 minutes and you freehand write whatever traumatic event that you've experienced or something that you're facing, and you just write about that event or that experience. And then when the time's up, you stop writing and you do it again on day two, three, and four. You will likely notice that on day two, you will have an acutely heightened sense of negativity as you're writing. And then it works itself out on day three and day four. Therapeutic writing or expressive writing has been found to decrease medical symptoms. It has been found to decrease E.R. visits, believe it or not, increase your GPA. I mean, the data is so vast and it has looked at so many patient populations. College people, elderly people with chronic medical conditions, athletes. It runs the gamut and the findings are always the same. Therapeutic writing has a profound impact on your brain and your body. It can decrease your stress, your sense of burnout, increase your sense of true resilience, not toxic resilience. And it can make a profound difference simply, you know.

Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: [00:38:23] And Doctor James Pennebaker talks about the reasons why, but simply because you're giving yourself that time complete privacy. No one is reading your things. And the other really important instruction with therapeutic writing is to use a pen or pencil and not type up the, you know, reflection, the 20 to 25 minutes that you're writing. Because our brains use a different neural circuitry when we write versus when we type, which is why, for example, you write your grocery list on a post-it and you go to the grocery store, you lose the post-it, but you still remember, oddly enough, everything that was on that list. But if you type it into your phone and say you leave your phone at home, it's gone. You don't remember anything. So you're using a different neural circuitry when you're writing. Many of us don't really write that often. We mostly type. I try to be as paperless as I can, but particularly for therapeutic writing, I will use scrap paper and, you know, find a pen or a pencil and practice it. I have been using therapeutic writing since I learned about it during my stress struggle, during my medical training, and I've used it for all sorts of things, and it really makes it just, you know, it makes a big difference. It's almost I would describe it as like, it's like you get out of your own way and you work it out, but you don't even realize you're working it out. It's just 20 to 25 minutes of writing for consecutive days. It's magic.

Jonathan Fields: [00:39:45] And I love that. I love the idea of zooming out. You know, that normalizing stress, this is something that it's a part of our lives. It's going to be a part of our lives. It is not you going through it alone. Everybody is going through their version of it, whether they voice it or share it or not, and that there are simple things that every single person can do that are accessible, that are free, that are non-obtrusive, that can make a real difference both in the moment and over time. Thank you. Hey, so I hope you enjoyed that conversation. Learned a little something about your own quest to come alive and work in life, and maybe feel a little bit less alone along this journey to find and do what sparks you. And remember, if you're at a moment of exploration, looking to find and do or even create work that makes you come more fully alive, that brings more meaning and purpose and joy into your life, take the time to discover your own personal Sparketype for free at sparketype.com. It'll open your eyes to a deeper understanding of yourself and open the door to possibility like never before. And hey, if you're finding value in these conversations, please just take an extra second right now to follow and rate SPARKED in your favorite podcast app. This is so helpful in helping others find the show and growing our community so that we can all come alive and work in life together. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields and this is SPARKED. This episode of SPARKED was produced by executive producers Lindsey Fox and Me, Jonathan Fields. Production and editing by Sarah Harney. Special thanks to Shelley Adelle for her research on this episode.