Rewire Your Brain to Reset Burnout and Stress

Speaker A: AFP is bringing the finance community together March 17th through the 19th in Austin, Texas. Tackle your biggest challenges through 18 sessions, networking roundtables and keynotes designed to inspire and empower. Join your peers and industry leaders to level up your FP and A skills and build connections that drive real results. Register now and learn more by visiting www.AFPonline.org. that's www.AFPonline.org and click on the link for the AFP, FP and A form. We look forward to seeing you in Austin, Tex. Stress is something none of us can avoid. If you're human, you're stressed. However, there are ways for us to reimagine our relationship with stress and manage it so it doesn't become a debilitating issue. With us today is Dr. Aditi Nurikar, a physician at Harvard Medical School, public health expert, medical correspondent with expertise in stress and resilience, and author of the book the Five Resets Rewire your brain and body for less stress and more resilience. Dr. Nurakar is also the closing keynote speaker for the 2025 AFP FP&A forum. Dr. Nurakar's keynote will provide practical strategies to effectively manage and mitigate stress and burnout, such as implementing a healthy media diet to reduce information overload, using sleep as a therapeutic intervention, adopting monotasking to become more focused, and applying cognitive reframing to strengthen brain health and resilience. Dr. Nurikar has written for a wide range of publications and appeared on numerous talk shows. She's a current member of the faculty of Harvard Medical School, where she teaches community health in the Division of Global Health and Social Medicine. She previously led the integrative medicine program, uh, at a Harvard teaching hospital, which brought acupuncture, yoga, meditation, and tai chi into primary care. Dr. Nurakar, it's a pleasure to see you. Thank you for being here today.

Speaker B: Thank you so much for having me. Pat. What an honor.

Speaker A: So I want to start with maybe a little bit of a true confession. As I was reading your book, I felt that, like there were moments where you were describing scenarios and reactions that some of your patients have had that I felt like you were talking to me.

Speaker B: I get that a lot. You know, one of the biggest reasons why you felt that, first of all, what an honor and, you know, a great privilege when you are reading a book. It's happened to me many times. I'm a voracious reader. And when you're reading a book and you feel like, wow, this person is really talking about me and My experience, particularly with the five resets, my book, when you're talking about stress and burnout and mental health, these have been universal challenges for all of us, regardless of where we live or what job we have or, you know, how much money we make or what gender we are, we have all universally. It's like the human condition at this point. We have all been through something so difficult over the past four to five years and we're just dealing with the fallout. So yes, you are not alone when you are saying that this book really spoke to you and that you felt it was speaking directly to you simply because stress and burnout are so universal now.

Speaker A: It's universal and as you said, it touches everybody. But I want to go back to the beginning for you. So as you describe in your book, as you get into your journey from a stressed medical resident to what you've become as being such an expert within the field, can you walk us through a little bit of your journey? How did this start for you?

Speaker B: So Pat, just like you said, I was a stressed patient before I became an expert in stress. I was a senior medical resident working in the cardiac ICU, working 80 hours a week, seeing death and dying and survival on a daily basis. But really gruesome things sometimes in the cardiac uh, ICU or even in the trauma bays in the er. I won't let you even, you know, I won't even get into what we saw in our medical training. But it's all part of medical training. What's make, it's what makes certain programs really robust is that as a resident and an early stage doctor you are seeing lots of things and you are working long, long hours. It was very customary for us to do 30 hour shifts. And so every third night you're sleeping in the hospital and so you are low on sleep. Particularly for me. I wasn't taking care of myself. I wasn't really, you know, I was sleeping erratic times whenever I could get some rest. Certainly wasn't thinking about nutrition, ah, nutritious meals or hydration or self care, self care path, the word itself did not even exist. Nor did stress or burnout or self awareness. These words were not part of my lexicon in my medical training. And so during this course of my last. Sorry, let me say that again, during the course of my medical training, one day at ah, post call, I was rounding in the cardiac ICU as the senior resident and I felt a flutter of palpate palpitations. What I call it felt like a wild, you know, a bunch of wild horses A stampede across my chest. And so I immediately sat down, knocked the wind out of me, quite literally. The nurse I was working with gave me some orange juice and immediately knew something wasn't right. I drank that orange juice and, you know, within seconds I was fine and still a little nervous, uh, and terrified of what just happened and that sensation. And then I kept rounding on my patients. Believe it or not, we both laughed it off saying, oh, it was probably a rough night because I did have a difficult night with lots of admissions and those palpitations never happened again in the hospital. But they followed me home night after frustrating night. Just as my head would hit the pillow, I would get that stampede of wild horses. And so at that time, I finally, after two weeks, I didn't know at the time what I was having. It was called a delayed stress reaction. But then I went to go see my doctor two weeks later because I was frustrated. I really wanted a good night's sleep. And they did the million dollar workup. She ordered blood tests for anemia, my thyroid electrolytes, did a heart ultrasound and echocardiogram, ekg, everything checked out normal. So she gave me a big reassuring smile like, hey, you're all, you know, everything's great. It's probably just stress. Try to relax. So I didn't really have many answers. I went home. And so I did what anyone else does, right, like try to relax. What does that mean for all of us? I would watch movies, I was single at the time, went out with friends, retail therapy, a massage, spent time with family. Nothing seemed to work. And so that's when I put my scientist hat on to really dive into the science of stress and how it impacts the brain and the body. And only through reading the various studies and bringing all of those into my life, into daily practice, did I find my way out of stress. And when I found my way out of stress, Pat, that is when I decided I truly made a vow, saying that I want to be the doctor that I needed during that difficult time. So instead of very well intentioned, just say, try to relax. I could offer patients who were also stressed some real concrete and science backed strategies. You know, one really interesting finding is that over 60 to 80% of all primary care visits in the US have a stress related component. So that's not to say that stress causes these visits, but it's certainly correlated with these visits. And I was that statistic. And then I found my way out of stress and became the doctor that I needed during that difficult time. And then the rest is History.

Speaker A: It's fascinating. Sometimes when you hear people's stories of how they got to where they are, it's often that, uh, deeply personal moment for them where they realize if they had someone like this, this would be helpful. So it's fascinating to hear that from you. There's a couple things that I'd like to dive into a little bit. You mentioned self care. You talked about the concept of, uh, there was a moment where you needed self care. There has to be an indicator though, for when someone knows they need that self care. And I believe you referenced that in the book as somewhat of the canary in the coal mine.

Speaker B: Yes. So I am not a historian. Yeah, so I'm not a historian, Pat. But I love this metaphor of canary in the coal mine. And back when we had many coal miners, they would go into the mines and we know that that air isn't great, right, for respiratory issues and pulmonary conditions. And so they would bring a canary, a caged bird, into the mines with them for their long days. They often spent 12, 16 hour days underground. And when the canary would stop singing, that would often be the first tell that the air is bad. And then they would get out of the mines because humans are historically bad at knowing those first signs of, uh, wait a second, something's not right, something's off. And so we all have that inner canary within us that is slowly singing a tune, and then when you don't pay attention, it belts a tune. And that's what happened. For me. That stampede of wild horses was like my canary getting a megaphone saying, hey, wake up, something's not right, you're not doing well. Until then, I'm sure my brain and my body were giving me all sorts of signals, but, you know, I was really living the resilience myth. And I was taught at a very early stage of my medical training that pressure makes diamonds. And I was a diamond in the making. And then my diamond cracked. So, yes, we all self care again, wasn't part of my lexicon. And we all have a canary in the coal mine. So for me, it was a stampede of wild horses. And 25 years ago was the first incident. And after that point, it has never happened again because I've just gotten more attuned to the signals of my body. And I've had lots of stress, right? I have gone through a medical training, become a doctor, gotten married, have children, developed a career. Stress doesn't really go away, but you just get better at handling it when you have these various tools at your disposal. And that's what I was able to do is craft a toolkit to use for myself and my patients. And so we all. So for me, it was a stampede of wild horses. For others, it could be abdominal pain, headaches, other physical manifestations, neck pain, shoulder pain, back pain, dizziness, nausea. And then mental health manifestations. Anxiety, depression, insomnia, irritability, quick to anger, fatigue. The list of what can happen to you because of stress and burnout is vast. Meaning the signs and symptoms, the signal. The canary in the coal mine. We each have a canary. The most important thing with this though, is to first see your doctor. If you are noticing a symptom that is troublesome, different or worrying, see your doctor like I did. Get the full medical workup, figure out, is this actually your heart? In my case, I was having these palpitations at night. Is there something going on in my heart or is there something else? And so only, you know, stress. In medical terms, we call it a diagnosis of exclusion, meaning that all other entities must be ruled out, whether, when, and then. Only then can you say, oh, it's just stress. And so that was what it was for me and likely for others. But it shows up in different ways. So what is your canary singing to you? What is the canary song? Most of us, when you think about that a little deeper, you might have that light bulb moment to say, oh, you know what, when I'm stressed I often have abdominal pain, or when I'm stressed I get headaches. And like, you can make that link. But yes, stress very much can influence your brain and your body. We know that stress is implicated or correlated with an increased risk of the common cold all the way to a heart attack. Stress is involved in lots of disease processes. That's not to say stress causes these, but there's a strong correlation.

Speaker A: So I think that, uh, as you describe that, it's very important for people to be able to isolate, think about and really identify what that that indicator is, what that trigger moment is. The canary in the coal mine. But the next thing that I want to kind of unwrap a little bit more is you mentioned the resilient men, the resilience myth. And I do think that it's common for people to think that, you know, you have to tough it out. When times get tough, you just gotta buckle down and just do it. But that's not. That's a contributor to harmful stress, correct?

Speaker B: That's right. In fact, I was the poster child of toxic resilience and the resilience myth. And so the first Kind of point to make is that there are two kinds of stress. There's healthy stress and unhealthy stress. And not all stress is created equal. And so when you have healthy stress, things like, you know, the goal of life is not to live a life with zero stress. It's actually to live the life with healthy, manageable stress that can serve you rather than harm you. And so what are examples of healthy stress? Healthy stress is getting a promotion, getting a new job, buying a new car or new home, taking a trip, planning a vacation, rooting for your favorite sports teams, these sorts of things, meeting a new best friend. The list can go on and on. It's these sorts of things. Healthy stress drives your life forward. It's a sense of forward momentum. It's productive, it's energizing, and it's really adaptive. That's what we call healthy stress in scientific terms. The other type of stress is actually what you and I have had and others when we say, oh, I've had a stressful week, I've had a stressful year or stressful day, that is actually unhealthy stress in scientific terms, maladaptive stress. And that is the sort of stress that when you're. That's what causes your canary to sing, causes mental and physical manifestation. And so I had lots of unhealthy stress. Other people likely do too, because I was living the resilience myth. And so the resilience myth is this idea that people who are resilient don't get burned out, don't feel stressed, and you just keep going. I was, like I said, I was a diamond in the making because I was taught pressure makes diamonds. But you know, Pat, the true definition of resilience scientifically is your innate biological ability to adapt, recover, and grow in the face of life's challenges. That is true resilience. However, over the past several years, like let's say if I asked you in 2015 or maybe even 2018, hey, Pat, what do you think about the word resilience? You would have likely said, oh, great word. Positive. Really, you know, good messaging, right? Like, it's a word that has a really positive connotation. And somewhere over the past couple of years, the connotation of resilience as a word. I know, I cringe when I hear it. It's very cringe worthy. You have a visceral response, particularly when people tell you, oh, just be more resilient. You're like, ugh, uh, ick, right? You get that ick feeling when people say that. Why is that? Because societally we are now changing that messaging. It's no longer true resilience, but rather toxic resilience. And so true resilience honors your boundaries, understands your human limitations and really leans into this idea of self compassion, meaning that your brain and body taking a rest is not a luxury but a biological necessity to get yourself back away from unhealthy stress, back to healthy stress.

Speaker A: I'm sorry, please finish.

Speaker B: But you know, toxic resilience unfortunately is what we're seeing a lot of and that is like productivity at all costs. A, um, mind over matter mindset. And just like, go, go, go. It's the Energizer money, uh, it's the Energizer bunny mentality. Like just keep going. In the UK we have, right there's the expression keep calm and carry on. And so all over we're seeing this messaging of resilience, but it's in fact toxic resilience. And so the resilience myth is simply that resilient people don't get burned out. And we know based on the data that's absolutely categorically false. One particular study found that even amongst the most resilient workers, 30% still had burnout. Which, and the researchers concluded that, yes, resilience is protective, it's certainly important, but it's not enough to prevent burnout. So if you're listening to this conversation and you're thinking like, wait a second, I was always, I thought I was resilient. I thought like, nothing can happen to me, I'm not going to get burned out. You might be someone who is resilient, yes, it's your innate biological ability, but you might be living that resilience myth and experiencing toxic resilience and in fact having burnout.

Speaker A: So I agree with everything that you just described. I feel like if our listeners, I think that I've experienced, we've all experienced those moments where you can identify where, ah, that push. If you're constantly pushing, I'm just going to power through this and it's all going to work out. It ultimately comes to a breaking point somewhere along the way. But there's also good stress. There's stress that uh, can be beneficial to someone in terms of their, their growth and what they're trying to achieve. And there was a quote that I pulled from your book that I really liked that jotted it down, was growing is often uncomfortable, but people should seek discomfort that is inherent in growth as a sign of progress instead of trying to avoid it. So a lot of what AFP does. We focus a lot of our. Our mission as an organization is to help the corporate practitioner market that we serve to be successful, help people to be successful in their roles. And that growth requires an element of change and pushing and a bit of drive forward. Um, can you talk a little bit about how stress can help. Good stress can help drive that.

Speaker B: Absolutely. Great question. So healthy stress, good stress, also scientifically known as adaptive stress. Think about the analogy of learning to sleep, swim. We all remember that time of not being able to swim, and now, you know, hopefully you're swimming, or maybe you've learned to swim in recent years, but when you're learning to swim, you know, the thing that's important to. Let me back up for a second and say that resilience doesn't function in a vacuum. You need stress, healthy stress, for resilience to show itself. Without healthy stress, there can be no resilience. And so thinking about this swimming example, that sense of healthy stress is the swim instructor, the encouraging swimming instructor, who's like, telling you to keep your head above water and keep going and focus on your strokes and keep going. Resilience, innate, true resilience is your ability to keep your head above water and your arms are flailing initially, but you're trying, and then ultimately you get the hang of it, and then you are gliding through the sea of trouble. And so similarly, when you're thinking about the relationship between adaptive stress and true resilience, it's that relationship between your swim instructor who's encouraging you and your ability to learn to swim. And we're all living through this sea of change. And so this analogy of swimming couldn't be more appropriate.

Speaker A: So in your book, in the Five Resets, you talk about rewiring your brain and your body, put less stress and more resilience. Give us an overview of what these small but mighty resets are.

Speaker B: So first, before the overview, I think what is kind of a light bulb moment for many people is that you can rewire your brain in the first place, right? Like most people think, oh, the brain I have at birth is the brain I've got for life. It's like a real grab bag. But the truth of the matter is that your brain is a muscle. And just like your biceps, we all understand what a bicep is like. When you do those bicep curls and lift weights, you're going to have that hypertrophy. You're going to have your biceps start bulging from muscles because you were working them out in the same way your brain is just like your bicep. You can do certain things to train your brain, just like you would do with your biceps, to help rewire it into certain patterns. And it's all, it's a fancy long scientific term known as neuroplasticity, which means that when you do things like when you focus on your sleep or when you start walking every day to relieve your stress or decrease your social media consumption, et cetera, you then over time, these are just some small examples of what we can do over time, can actively rewire your brain. And so my framework for helping people rewire their brain, it comes very practically both from a professional and personal standpoint. It's what I used when I found my way out of stress as a stress patient. And then I've deeply studied all of these principles because I became a doctor with an expertise in stress. So I've used many of these strategies on my patients. And so the framework is five resets. I call them five small but mighty mindset shifts. And so the first one is to get clear on what matters most. Then these are in no particular order. So get clear on what matters most, find your quiet in a noisy world, sync your brain to your body, bring your best self forward and come up for air. And so each of these resets or frameworks is a way to rethink and transform your relationship with stress and burnout. And then within each of these resets, I offer a total of, uh, 15, 15 science back strategies. I would like to say Pat, because I am a doctor and I've seen so many patients from different walks of life with varying resources. It's always been really important that everything I suggest and prescribe is free. Because, you know, if we could all jet off to Bali to relieve our stress for six months, we would. And because we all have financial constraints, family constraints, obligations, those aren't, those aren't realities. And so I deeply believe, based on my personal experience and the work I've done with patients, that you can rewire your brain for less stress and burnout in the midst of a complicated life with competing priorities and big jobs and childcare and all of the things that, you know, as a working mother, I'm living those that reality very much. But in spite of all of these things, you can still do some science backed strategies that are small, that take like minutes to do to help rewire your brain for less stress and burnout.

Speaker A: But it requires focus, it requires a

Speaker B: little bit of time every day, but it doesn't require that much time. And in fact, when you focus on just doing, let's say five minutes a day of, you know, one or two things. I call it the resilience rule of two. Your brain can only handle two new changes at a time. And so that's why New Year's resolutions fail often because we say, like, I'm going to do these 15 things. Your brain, when it's feeling a sense of stress, you know, it needs adapt, right? So adaptive stress means that your brain has adapted to the stress maladaptive stress. Your brain isn't adapting well. And so even when something is positive that's happening in your life, it's still a form of stress. And you know, like New Year's resolutions, it's still stressful to start these new habits that might be positive. So aim to do two at a time. That's how you make change last and make it sustainable. And it only really takes five minutes. You know, Pat, it's easier, um, when you're looking at the psychology of habit formation, it's easier to do something every day just for a few minutes. When you're trying to create a new habit and build those neural circuits, those brain circuits, it's easier to do something every day for a few minutes than it is to do something once in a while because you avoid decision fatigue. And so aiming to do something small. Two things, ideally five minutes, two minutes sometimes. There's one strategy I offer that's a three second brain reset. It's stop, breathe and be. And so there are so many things that you could do. There's a menu of offerings, 15 things and many more, um, that you could try and they're all science backed and you can bring those into your everyday life.

Speaker A: So another little true confession. True confession. I did stop breathing be before this call.

Speaker B: Oh, that's so great. So did I try it?

Speaker A: Settle down just a little bit.

Speaker B: I do stop, read, be before every conversation, talk, everything. It's just a good reset. The instructions are in the name. You stop, you breathe and you be. It's a three second grounding exercise. And what it does is it taps into your mind body connection. You know, your brain and your body are communicating all day long. And so it's a way to really tap into your mind body connection and influence your mind body connection connection. I'm so glad you used it. Uh, it's like something that people, you know, it's very tangible. Right? Like I was the first thing that I ever learned when I started learning more about the mind body connection and stress and the biology of the brain and the body and how it's all connected. In my medical training, when I was learning these strategies, Stop Breathe B was my first. It was my gateway into this whole world.

Speaker A: So the last question I want to ask you, and then this is for our listeners, the listeners that we have that are feeling stressed right now. What's one practical tip or reset that you could recommend that they would start implementing today?

Speaker B: So my first suggestion would be to deeply understand that you are not alone and it is not your fault. Looking at all of the data, 70% of people, this is not industry specific by the way, this is across industries. About 70% of people have at least one some form and some feature of stress or burnout. In the uk, a recent study came out saying that over the past month, 90% of people are facing burnout. And so that's like saying in a room of 30 people, 21 people are struggling with stress or burnout. So if you are feeling like this, you know, understand that you are not the exception, you're the rule and you are not alone, it's not your fault. And so the first sort of way to look into this is to just give yourself lots of grace and self compassion and understand that your brain and your body are doing the best they can and they're actually designed to handle short bursts of stress, but not this long term chronic stress that we've all been through over the past four to five years. Stop Breathe B is a great tip that you can start right now. Another tip that you can do is to really focus on digital well being and create some digital boundaries. So most of us, what do we do when we're taking breaks? We just keep scrolling through Instagram or TikTok or at night we spend hours doing this. Understand that these are not benign entities. They have a direct influence on the brain and the rewiring of your brain. And so if you can create some digital boundaries. This is not about becoming a digital monk. We need technology. It is very important to stay informed and connected. It's not about total abstinence. In fact, the science has shown that refraining from technology isn't actually good for your health and well being. Decreasing your reliance on devices however, has been found to be very helpful. And there's a lot of strategies there. Um, keeping your phone off your nightstand so you're not checking it first thing in the morning, giving yourself a few minutes, switching your phone to grayscale. So I do this often and I can show you a thing, Pat, you just do this.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: Where is it? Do this As I, uh. Okay, here we go. And you just. And it switches this to grayscale. And that's a really powerful brain reset, because what that does is it makes your scrolling less enticing and less stimulating for your brain. And that's a setting that you can find in your phone to do that. And then it helps you get off your phone so you can live more fully in your life and avoid something called popcorn brain. But I think I've said too much here.

Speaker A: Well, we're going to hear more about it at the FP and a forum that you'll be providing the closing keynote for, um, as we get into 2025, which I do want to thank you for the time that you spent with us today. I really enjoyed this conversation and I'm looking forward to continuing it when we see you again at the FP&A forum.

Speaker B: I cannot wait. It's going to be so fun, and I'm really eager to give the presentation. And especially my favorite Pat is always the Q and A after, so I can really engage and answer questions. So I'm really looking forward to all of it.

Speaker A: Um, well, I'll be preparing a couple questions for you. I'll be ready to go. So we're looking forward to the conversation. Thank you so much for your time, and we will talk to you again in a few months.

Speaker B: Thank you. What a pleasure. Thanks for the conversation and for reading the Five Resets.

Speaker A: Thank you for providing it for us. It was great. It was a great read. I've already recommended it to a few, including, uh, some of my colleagues and my wife, who's starting the book also.

Speaker B: Oh, fantastic. Thank you.

Speaker A: All right, thank you so much for your time. We'll look forward to talking with you again soon.

Speaker B: Okay, bye. Thanks, Pat.

Speaker A: Bye. Bye.

Speaker B: Thank you for listening to this episode of AFP Conversations brought to you by the association for Financial Professionals. You can subscribe on the platform of your choice. We'd love to hear from you, so please leave a rating, review and ideas for future podcasts. Thanks for listening.

Speaker A: SA.