A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Stress is a chronic problem for many people, and a recent survey by the American Psychological Association finds that nearly half of adults in this country wish they had someone to help them manage their stress levels. If you're looking to get a handle on stress in the new year, there is a new book to help with that. NPR's Rhitu Chatterjee spoke to the author and brings us some tips.
RHITU CHATTERJEE, BYLINE: For many years, Harvard physician Dr. Aditi Nerurkar counseled patients struggling with symptoms of too much stress. She gave them science-backed tools and strategies to recover and cope better in the long run. Now she's written up those tips in her new book, "The 5 Resets."
ADITI NERURKAR: "The 5 Resets" has been laid out to be a road map.
CHATTERJEE: The first step on that road map is to find what she calls the MOST goal.
NERURKAR: MOST is an acronym, M-O-S-T.
CHATTERJEE: M for motivating, O for objective and measurable, S for small and T for timely.
NERURKAR: What you want to do when you create your MOST goal is ask yourself the question what matters to me most?
CHATTERJEE: She says studies show that when someone focuses on what matters most to them, it makes the goal feel more doable. The rest of Nerurkar's book has a range of tools to achieve that goal. They're all simple daily practices that lower the amount of stress someone experiences every day. Her second reset is about finding quiet in a noisy world, for example, by limiting how much we interact with our phones.
NERURKAR: Studies have shown that on average, adults check their phone 2,617 times a day.
CHATTERJEE: She says surveys even showed that over 50% of people check their phones within five minutes of waking up, and some even before their second eye is open.
NERURKAR: They are scrolling through the headlines or social media or their email. Think about what that is doing to your brain and your body. Think about what that's doing to your stress.
CHATTERJEE: She suggests not having the phone nearby at night so you can't reach for it as soon as you wake up.
NERURKAR: So when you open your eye, give your body and brain the ability to open the other eye and just rest in the moment. Acclimate to the morning, the light. Giving yourself that little moment of pause, of grounding at the start of your day can be a game changer.
CHATTERJEE: During the day, too, she suggests keeping the phone in a drawer or somewhere out of reach, so we don't give in to the urge to check it all the time. Nerurkar's third reset includes ways to sync the brain and body to counter the effects of stress. One of them is a quick, deep breathing exercise called Stop-Breathe-Be that she's been using for years.
NERURKAR: When I had a busy clinical practice and I was a medical resident in training, and I would see 30 patients a day. And so as I would knock on the patient door before entering the next room, I would stop, breathe and center myself and just be. It's three seconds. And I would say this to myself under my breath - stop, breathe and be.
CHATTERJEE: And when repeated throughout the day, she says, the practice can significantly lower one's stress. For her fourth reset, she suggests coming up for air by taking regular breaks.
NERURKAR: There are many ways that you can engage and really honor your breaks - stretching, taking a quick walk, you know, walking around outside your building, if you work from home going outside, doing a fake commute.
CHATTERJEE: She says studies show that even a five or 10 minute break a few times a day can lower overall stress and boost cognition and productivity. Nerurkar's fifth and final reset has ways to counter one of the most common impacts of stress on our psyches, making us more negative.
NERURKAR: So when there is a negative experience, it becomes sticky in your brain like Velcro. The same amount of good and bad may be happening to you at the same time, but when you're feeling a sense of stress, you hold on to those negative experiences.
CHATTERJEE: And a proven way to make the brain less sticky for negative experiences, she says, is a daily practice of gratitude journaling, writing down five things that happened that day that you're grateful for.
NERURKAR: Gratitude shifts your brain away from Velcro to Teflon, and it does that through the scientific principle of cognitive reframing. Essentially, what that means is what you focus on grows.
CHATTERJEE: Regardless of which of these resets you might pick for yourself, Nerurkar cautions to only pick two at a time. She calls it the Resilience Rule of Two.
NERURKAR: The Resilience Rule of Two is how your brain responds to change. Change is a stressor for your brain. Even positive changes in your life can be a stress.
CHATTERJEE: So picking two things at a time, she says, will make it more likely for those changes to stick and become daily habits.
Rhitu Chatterjee, NPR News.
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