5 Simple Daily Resets To Reduce Stress

There’s a good chance you’ve experienced extreme stress and serious burnout recently. With all of life’s constant demands, it’s hard not to feel exhausted. But what if there were some easy tools to help make your life a little less stressful?

Harvard physician Aditi Nerurkar, M.D., MPH, may have some answers. She has been studying stress and burnout after suffering from her own experience and not getting the medical attention she needed. Instead, she had to learn new ways to cope on her own stress, which she offers to the rest of us in her new book The 5 Resets. The book discusses a simple regimen to help reduce stress and burnout for a happier, healthier, and more fulfilled life.

In her book, Nerurkar says stress isn’t necessarily the enemy, and when you have a healthy amount, it can allow you to propel forward and adapt to whatever life brings. The trick is finding that sweet spot where your stress doesn’t overwhelm you. In The 5 Resets, she provides helpful tools and techniques that can help reset your stress so you can feel better all around.

1. Get clear on what matters most.

This reset is all about determining what matters most to you and getting in the right mindset to receive it. In the book, Nerurkar discusses three techniques to help target your goals without causing a lot of added stress in the process.

• MOST goal: To help narrow down your goals, Nerurkar suggests using a technique that involves writing down a list of goals and choosing the one that motivates you the most (and that is also easily attainable), so you can make simple changes to reach it. She says it’s essential to keep your goal small so nothing can stand in your way and ensure that it is one you can achieve sooner rather than later.
• Backwards plan: Get a visual representation of your journey by writing it down to see how you’re doing. Here, you’ll start with your end goal and work backward, jotting down each step you take to get there in reverse order.
• Find Buried treasure: Go back in your mind to determine what has brought you joy in your life, then add that to your daily routine for roughly 10-20 minutes.

2. Find quiet in a noisy world.

By “noisy”, Nerurkar is referring to the countless digital distractions on our phones, which could be contributing to a lot of our everyday stress. No surprise there. However, she says you don’t have to even be on the phone to experience worsening stress-related conditions and poor concentration. As Nerurkar puts it in the book, just the presence of your phone can distract you and decrease your brainpower.

She says this is the reset that lets you reflect on the relationship you have with your phone and take back the control it has over you. Start with simple steps like limiting your screen time, creating a physical boundary from your phone, and unsubscribing to automated news alerts and push notifications.

3. Sync your brain and your body.

“Your brain and your body are in constant communication and inextricably linked,” Nerurkar explains in the book. During this reset, you’ll get a better understanding of that connection, while uncovering ways to sync the two to help manage your stress. One of the methods she discusses in the book is Stop-Breathe-Be, where you physically stop where you are, take a deep inhale and exhale, and then ground yourself in the present.

Nerurkar also iterates the importance of exercise when you’re stressed, but it doesn’t have to be a whole hour-long sweaty workout. Simply walking and remembering to take breaks throughout the day can make a positive impact on your stress levels.

4. Come up for air.

Speaking of breaks, your brain really needs a breather, especially when life gets busy. Breaks may even help you be more productive, Nerurkar says, by creating “healthy boundaries to maintain your energy and focus and feel more in control as you juggle your many roles.”

To do this, Nerurkar’s book explains three methods:

• The Goldilocks principle: Find your healthy stress level to feel motivated, but not overwhelmed.
• The magic of monotasking: Create time blocks to work on one task and one task only.
• The fake commute: Take time in the morning to gradually transition from home mode to work mode by going for a walk or grabbing a coffee outside of the home.

5. Bring your best self forward.

We all have an inner critic, which doesn’t help with stress. Nerurkar says to ditch the stubborn critic, it’s important to catalog your gratitude by writing down what you’re grateful for no matter how small. She also suggests expressing yourself through writing to release any emotions or tensions that may be weighing you down that day.

The bottom line

Nerurkar says you can start by just making two changes in your daily life at first so you don’t get too overwhelmed. If you do start feeling frustrated by the process with one day being more productive than another, that’s OK. What you’re feeling is normal, and it’s important to stay consistent. As Nerurkar puts it, “No matter your trajectory or speed, trust that you’re making progress on your stress journey, because you are.”