Managing your energy has never been more critical than it is today. If you’re like most busy women I know, you’re multitasking all day, struggling to get good sleep, and feeling frantic from morning to night. Modern life, especially our work environments, expects us to act like machines, chugging away virtually nonstop—with only a couple of short breaks—day in and day out.
We’re expected to be “on” all the time and super productive, pumping out quality and quantity. It’s not uncommon to have twenty browser tabs open, hopping from task to task without ever being able to focus and execute. It’s no wonder we feel drained, overworked, resentful of our jobs, and like we get nothing accomplished despite spending longer and longer hours at work—and then we lack the energy to do the things we want in our personal lives.
Women are under immense pressure to do all and be all. You’re supposed to cook Pinterest-worthy dinners, sculpt a perfectly hot body, be the best partner or mother, pursue your hobbies, say yes to every social event, and, often times, be the household CEO on top of all that. You’re frickin’ exhausted, and no amount of mimosas and manicures is going to solve that self-care crisis. You can’t step into your power if your battery is always drained.
When it comes to rest, you may assume I mean sleep. That’s part of it. A good night’s sleep puts a big deposit of energy back into your savings account. But if all day you’re making massive withdrawals and ending up in the proverbial red, eventually it’ll catch up with you. Recharging is a day and night deal.
Stepping into your inner power requires equal parts energy management, self-care strategy (the stuff that truly matters), and boundary setting. It means taking time for your damn self because the truth is nobody else is going to do it for you. Recharging doesn’t have to mean skipping town for a weeklong retreat, though that does sound nice, huh? The simple strategies in this chapter can be woven into your daily routine here and there to help you recoup some of that precious energy.
Multitasking has been shown repeatedly to result in lower productivity, so why do you keep doing it? And more important, how do you stop? How do you manage all the stresses of modern life so you can feel rejuvenated instead of like drained batteries? That’s what you’ll learn in this chapter. Balancing your energy comes down to a few basic principles and key habits around inputs and outputs. This pillar intimately connects with the others. Often what you perceive as a food or movement problem has its roots in how rested, recovered, or stressed you are. The Core 4 framework for recharging your energy focuses on
optimizing your sleep quality and quantity;
managing how you work;
recharging yourself often, with the right mix of activities and rest; and
finding ways for you to actively de-stress.
THE MISMATCH BETWEEN ENVIRONMENT AND BIOLOGY
There’s a mismatch between our environment and our human biology. We’ve gone from a much slower, simpler pace of life to the unprecedented pace of today’s world. We’re blitzed with information all day every day. It’s all go, go, go; hustle, hustle, hustle; we’ll sleep when we’re dead; and rest is for wimps. But as author Tony Schwartz says, “The way we’re working isn’t working.”
In theory, we should spend about one-third of each day sleeping, but most of us get far less. We ignore our body’s natural rhythms without recognizing the price we pay for it. Sleep problems become a vicious cycle: the worse you sleep, the shittier you feel. Because you’re so drained, you don’t have the energy to move, eat well, or take care of yourself. Poor sleep affects the hormones implicated in appetite, such as leptin, ghrelin, and neuropeptide Y. That means when you don’t sleep well, not only are you tired, distracted, and irritable but you may also end up with more cravings or an out-of-control appetite. When you feel like that, it’s all but impossible to make nourishing food choices or have the gusto needed for a workout.
You’ve already learned about how to eat better and strengthen your body. Now you’ll learn how to manage your energy, and it all starts with your body’s circadian rhythm.
You’re a biological being living in a techno-digital world, trying to cope with a system that disregards how your body works. If you’ve ever gone camping for a few days, you know your body can quickly adapt to the great outdoors. The sun comes up, and you’re awake. You feel drowsy and ready for sleep when it gets dark—that’s common when you leave your modern, brightly lit environment. However, if you’re like most people, during the day you’re surrounded by obnoxious fluorescent lights, computer screens, and stale indoor air. At night, instead of a gradual decrease in light exposure (which your ancestors had), you’re still flooded with light—especially the blue wavelengths that tell the brain to stay awake and alert.
Let’s get a little nerdy for a minute. Natural light contains different wavelengths, including blue light, which is part of the visible spectrum from 450 to 500 nanometers. When your eyes are exposed to blue wavelengths, this signal travels through the optic nerve to the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) in the brain. The SCN helps regulate your circadian rhythm, signals that it’s time to be awake and alert, and prevents the release of melatonin during the day. In the evening, when the sun goes down and blue light dips, that information is relayed to the SCN too. When there’s little blue light, the pea-size pineal gland in your brain releases melatonin, signaling that it’s time to sleep.
The screens of our computers, tablets, and phones as well as some artificial indoor lighting give off a lot of the blue wavelengths. So when you’re lying in bed with your phone a few inches away from your face, your brain and your body get the signal to be alert. Blue light is even absorbed through your eyelids when your eyes are closed. In essence, we’re living in near-perpetual daytime.
Now we have artificial light coming into our eyes almost constantly. Cell phones are probably the biggest culprit. A 2017 survey of 2000 Americans by the firm Deloitte found that 66 percent of people looked at their phone within thirty minutes of going to sleep. Fourteen percent looked at their phone immediately before bed. And according to a 2016 study of over 600 American adults, more smartphone use during the day and around bedtime was associated with poorer sleep quality and quantity. In other words, the more people used their phones, the worse they slept.
That constant light exposure—too much of it at night—interferes with your body’s natural circadian rhythm and wreaks havoc on your sleep. There’s also evidence that blue light exposure may prevent the natural dip in body temperature that normally accompanies sleep, making your sleep more restless. Improving your sleep quality is the first aspect of this pillar.
SLEEP: A NONNEGOTIABLE
Improving your energy starts with getting better sleep. Yet, more than one-third of Americans get less than seven hours of sleep a night. Even mild but chronic sleep deprivation—like sleeping four to six hours a night—is enough to negatively affect your ability to think clearly, stay mentally alert, and feel frickin’ awesome.
If you want to build muscle, kick cravings, and improve body composition, getting better, more restful sleep is key. During a full night’s rest, your body repairs itself, your brain becomes more efficient, and your hormones regulate themselves. It’s when you consolidate and process memory. Sleep is both physical and psychological recovery. The crazy thing is that humans are adaptable, which means many of us learn to function at a lower energy level—propping ourselves up with caffeine and sugar. You forget how good it feels to have a full night of solid rest: like a badass who can take on the world.
But people are misinformed about sleep. First, they think they won’t suffer any ill effects from sleep deprivation. Wrong! I was sleep-deprived for years, getting about five or six hours a night back when I was teaching. I wasn’t up all night, but I never got the sleep my body needed. Being tired and never feeling completely rested became my new normal. Starting my day was a battle. I couldn’t wake up without hitting the snooze button half a dozen times, and every morning I was so drowsy. I was stuck indoors at work all day and then spent most of the evening on my cell phone and watching TV, letting blue light pour into my eyes.
This draggy, fuzzy way of operating is the norm for many others too. I swore I was fine even though I felt far from it. In that state of mild to moderate sleep deprivation, people perform as poorly on thinking tests as if they were drunk—so, quite badly. You just can’t think clearly. In fact, a 2006 study comparing total sleep deprivation with sleep restriction concluded that the sleep-restricted group—who managed to get six hours of sleep a night—performed just as poorly on cognitive tests as the subjects who had stayed awake for forty-eight hours straight. Even more telling, the group that got six hours of sleep thought they were doing okay. Although you might feel “fine” with less sleep, you’re likely impaired when it comes to tasks involving thinking, reasoning, problem solving, and more.
I know there will always be someone who swears, “Well, my aunt Mary got only four hours of sleep a night and lived to a hundred and two,” but that’s an exception to the rule. Most adults need between seven and nine hours of sleep.
It’s not only how much you sleep but when you sleep that matters. Let’s say you go to sleep after midnight but you still get eight hours. That might sound reasonable, but it’s not nearly as good as going to sleep earlier. Here’s why:
Throughout the night, your body moves through different stages of sleep that last on average about ninety minutes. You go from lighter sleep (stages one and two) into deeper sleep (stages three and four) and through the rapid eye movement (REM) stage of sleep, which is when you dream.
During deep sleep, your brain waves slow down and your muscles completely relax. You’re pretty out of it. Your body releases hormones like growth hormone and prolactin (which is important for the immune system and metabolism) and repairs damaged tissues. This is when physical recovery really happens—when you’re in deep sleep, your body is repairing itself, shoring up the immune system, and rebooting for the next day.
The first big chunk of deep sleep you get when you’re dead to the world is spurred by the rise of melatonin, a hormone produced by the brain (in the pineal gland) that basically tells your body to go into sleep mode. Its primary job is to put the brakes on your body’s adrenal output. (Hint: remember cortisol from the Pillar 1 chapter?)
When it comes to sleep, cortisol and melatonin oppose each other. Cortisol ramps up in the morning and tapers off in the afternoon, while melatonin starts to ramp up in the afternoon and peaks around 2:00 a.m. If most or all of your sleep occurs after that peak of melatonin, you miss your opportunity to get the highest-quality, deepest sleep.
As you continue through the night toward the morning hours, you get less deep sleep and more REM sleep, yet both are vital for optimal rest and recovery.
When you don’t sleep enough, or you don’t go to sleep at the same time every night, it’s hard to develop a consistent routine. The answer? Go to bed at a reasonable time that syncs better with your circadian rhythm, and introduce regularity to your sleep-wake cycle.
The Keys to Better Sleep
When you’re stuck in a crappy sleep cycle, it can be hard to break out, but addressing a few basic things can have a tremendous impact. In the Core 4 program, you’ll spend a few days focusing specifically on your sleep. In the meantime, you can make these small changes:
START WITH BREAKFAST. Believe it or not, better sleep starts with your morning meal. In order to make melatonin, you need to produce serotonin, often called the “happiness” neurotransmitter.1 Serotonin is very important to your brain, but most of it is made in your gut. One of the amino acids that helps produce serotonin is tryptophan, which is typically found in animal-based foods—most famously in your Thanksgiving turkey—but even walnuts contain tryptophan too. Start your day with a decent breakfast that includes 20 to 30 grams of protein, ideally from animal sources because they have all the essential amino acids. You’ll get a dose of tryptophan, and the protein may ward off snacking or cravings later in the day because protein is so satiating.
Also, a larger breakfast will help you “front-load” your meals, meaning you take in more calories earlier in the day and have lighter meals at night for better digestion and sleep. If you’re not a big breakfast person, try something light, like soup or eggs.
GET OUTSIDE. Ideally, aim for fifteen minutes of sunlight exposure in the morning. Sunlight helps regulate your circadian rhythm, keeping you alert during the day. Try to get a brief walking break outside before noon, without sunglasses if you can.
REDUCE CAFFEINE. You may not be able to imagine your morning without a cup (or two) of coffee. An enzyme in your liver—cytochrome P450 1A2—is responsible for processing caffeine. While some people are lucky fast metabolizers, three-quarters of the population are slow metabolizers. Keep in mind, too, that caffeine has a half-life of six hours. That means that six hours after drinking a cup of coffee, your body has metabolized only half of it, so if you drink it late in the day, it could affect your sleep.
A better bet? Swear off caffeine after noon. Try switching to caffeine-free herbal tea.
CREATE A BEDTIME ROUTINE. Signaling your body that you’re getting ready to wind down and go to bed makes it easier to fall asleep. This doesn’t mean rushing around for five minutes before you crawl into bed. Plan on taking thirty to sixty minutes before sleep to engage in your bedtime routine.
Stay off electronics for at least an hour before bed to avoid adrenaline spikes (looking at you, online trolls!) and blue light. Better yet, opt for low-key activities, like washing the dishes, laying out your clothes for the next day, taking a bath or shower, or reading. Everyone has their own mix, but your body and brain need more than a few minutes to wind down.
LIMIT LIGHT EXPOSURE. Light, especially the blue wavelengths, tells your brain to stay alert. In the evening, use screen-dimming programs like f.lux or Night Shift on your electronics. Also use salt lamps or candles, and install dimmers on other lamps—as the sun goes down, lower the lights in your house. Try swapping out fluorescent and LED light sources you use in the evening for bulbs with more yellow and red wavelengths. These colors are at the opposite end of the light spectrum and aren’t as stimulating as blue light. (Think of the warm glow a fire gives off.) You can also try amber or blue-blocking glasses to reduce the blue light that reaches your eyes. The most inexpensive pairs start at around ten dollars.
TRY ESSENTIAL OILS. Some scents have powerful calming properties. Use an essential oil like lavender or cedarwood before you go to sleep. Essential oils have been used for centuries to relax and calm the body, and have been shown in studies to reduce anxiety and stress.
SET THE STAGE. Your bedroom should be dark, cool, and quiet. Room-darkening shades that keep out ambient light, a noise machine that masks traffic or outside noise, and a lower room temperature (between 65 and 68 degrees Fahrenheit) can all improve your sleep. Get in the habit of leaving your electronic devices, like your phone and tablet, in another room, with the sound turned off. If you need an alarm, get a regular analog alarm clock. You likely don’t need a phone in your bedroom!
WORKING WITH YOUR ULTRADIAN RHYTHM
Sleep is one piece—possibly the most important piece—of managing your energy, but you can sleep pretty well and still have a daytime routine that leaves you drained. You’re not a machine capable of working at 100 percent all the time.
When I talk about energy, I mean physical, mental, and emotional energy, all of which you can boost by working with your body’s natural ultradian rhythms.
An ultradian rhythm cycle typically lasts between 90 and 120 minutes, whether you’re awake or asleep, and affects your ability to concentrate, learn, and focus. You’ve probably experienced this when working or studying. You’re able to concentrate for an hour or two, and then it’s so easy to get distrac—Oh look, something shiny!
As you’ve seen, human biology is tied to cycles and rhythms: our appetites, sleep and wake times, hormonal fluctuations, and more. Yet the conveniences of modern life allow us to override our cycles and go full linear, working harder with fewer rest periods, flooding our homes and workplaces with artificial light, and ignoring our natural drive to eat in the name of dieting. I’m not saying we must live in caves and give up all modern conveniences, but if we do things smarter, we can make our bodies happier and healthier at the same time.
You’re probably already aware of your own natural energy fluctuation. You may have noticed the peaks and troughs, ups and downs during your day. You may even know when your most productive time of day is. My friend Kate loves to write at night because she feels less inhibited late in the day, whereas I do my best work first thing in the morning.
No matter how productive you are, at some point you’ll experience energy lulls. Let’s say you didn’t sleep well, skipped breakfast, and had a lunch full of processed carbs. Now it’s 3:00 p.m. and you’re exhausted. You can’t focus, you’re hungry, and you feel like crap. This is the midafternoon slump that nearly all of us experience.
Now let’s say you had a good night’s sleep, a protein-packed breakfast, followed by a productive morning of work and a balanced lunch. It’s 3:00 p.m. and you hit your afternoon slump. This isn’t the time to do any focused, brain-heavy work, so you might catch up on email or take a quick walk outside. You’ll still have an energy lull, but because of the way you’ve slept and eaten, it won’t be as dramatic. Honoring your body’s ultradian rhythm and giving yourself a break can help you feel heaps better.
You may be expected—or expecting yourself—to perform at a high level straight through the entire day. But this isn’t possible when it comes to mental focus and cognitive ability. Deep, “in the zone” mental focus is not limitless. We all naturally work in these 90- to 120-minute stretches and then drift off because our ability to focus is tapped out. You may scroll social media or scan the headlines because you’re looking for a break, but this isn’t the kind of break that revitalizes you.
Embrace the 90-30 Workflow
This is where the 90-30 workflow comes in. It’s an amalgam of some of the work of Tony Schwartz, author of The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working, corporate wellness insight from my friend Jamie Scott, and parts of the Pomodoro time-management technique. And it’s simple. Do 90 minutes of work followed by a 30-minute break. The idea is that you work, rest, and repeat. When I was working on this book, I’d write for 90 minutes and then take a solid 30 minutes off to go for a walk outside or do some light chores. I didn’t, however, hop on my email or keep working on a different but mentally draining task. Scrolling through email and social media is not an energizing activity. Let’s be honest: it’s usually way more draining!
If you have little flexibility in your workday and you rarely get a break, you can still get creative when you do have the occasional moment of downtime with something called “channel switching.” If you have a mentally taxing job where you’re staring at a computer screen all day, try doing some light physical activity to reboot. That might be going outside for a 15-minute break and focusing your eyes on something distant to reduce fatigue. Maybe it’s taking a walk or stretching.
If you have a job that’s more physically demanding, give yourself more of a mental recharge. During an eight-hour shift, going to CrossFit on your lunch break may not be your best channel switch. A better option might be sitting down and taking a break outside, using a meditation app, reading, or something else that gives your body a rest. You have to do what’s right for your routine, but see where you can find some easy energy wins in your day.
You drain yourself all day long . . . and then you wonder why you’re so tired. If you use your phone all day and don’t plug it in to recharge, it dies. That’s a very simple closed system, but we’re complex biological beings. It’s more nuanced with us. Being drained saps your willpower, and that makes it harder to choose nourishing foods and get a workout done—another way the four pillars interrelate.
You may resist this 90-30 idea, swearing you’re more productive when you just push through. But it’s important to experiment with this during the next thirty days of the program. I promise you’ll be amazed at how much more energized you feel. Everyone I know who has tried it has said something like “Holy shit, I’ve gotten way more work done than I did before!” Most people are good for about three or four of these work-rest cycles a day, which equals up to six hours’ worth of focused, productive output.
GIVE UP MULTITASKING
The other major change you can make to align yourself with your body’s natural energy cycles may seem counterintuitive, but I want you to try it anyway. It’s this simple (but probably not easy): give up multitasking.
I know, I know. You’re probably used to having multiple documents and websites open on your computer at any given time. You return calls from your Bluetooth headset in the car. You jump back and forth between composing emails and working on your latest project. You may think you’re getting more done with multitasking, but it’s all an illusion. You’ll get more accomplished by focusing on one thing at a time.
Hopping from one task to another may make you feel like you’re getting more done, but it makes it harder for your memory and cognition to function at their best. There’s something called a “switching cost.” It’s hard during multitasking to descend into focused thinking. The result? You’re less productive.
Energy-Boosting Breaks
There are a variety of energizing breaks you can take as part of your workflow. (And the 90-to-30 ratio is only a suggestion—even a short break of 10 or 15 minutes can help you work with your body’s natural ebbs and flows and be more productive.) Give these breaks a try:
USE A GUIDED MEDITATION. Fire up a guided meditation podcast, app, or video, pop in your headphones, and bliss out. Tons of meditations can be done in a seated position, whether you’re on a park bench or at your desk.
ENJOY A CUP OF HOT TEA OR BROTH. Take the time to sip and savor a hot beverage while taking a screen break.
FIND A “SIT SPOT.” Choose a place, preferably outside, and sit for ten minutes. Observe what’s around you without judging, and simply let your mind wander as you breathe deeply and slowly.
CONNECT. Call someone you can connect with, and take the time to catch up over the phone. (Texting doesn’t count.) Or sit and chat with a friend for a few minutes. This is a simple way to boost the feel-good neurotransmitter serotonin. Hug it out—with permission—for some bonus oxytocin, the bonding and empathy hormone.
GET GRATEFUL. Sit or walk and make a mental list of things you’re grateful for, no matter how small.
DO A LIGHT WORKOUT. A quick walk or a few yoga poses or stretches will get your blood flowing and ease tight muscles.
Try to open only one document at a time, or check your email just once or twice a day, then respond to all your messages. (You may also save time in doing this because you’re not constantly disrupted by pings, dings, and screen notifications. Distraction central.) Or give yourself a physical cue that it’s time to focus. I put on my big noise-canceling headphones, and when I do that, I know it’s work time.
Spend Less Time on Social Media
According to a 2017 survey, the average adult spends two hours and fifteen minutes on social media every day. It’s probably higher than that now. A 2015 study clocked it at less, an hour and forty minutes, on average, but that’s still a huge amount of time spent—I mean wasted—on social media.
If you’ve ever felt like you can’t give up social media but it’s also a giant time suck, you’re not alone. It has to do with dopamine, a powerful neurotransmitter. Dopamine has a role in the anticipation-reward loop in your brain. It explains the feel-good thrill you experience before you pull the lever on a slot machine—or when you see the little red notification on your email or hear your phone chime with a Facebook notification.
Social media designers understand—and leverage—this powerful loop. The dings, red dots, likes, hearts, and infinitely scrollable screens become nearly irresistible to your brain so you keep checking and endlessly scrolling. (For what it’s worth, I’m not immune to the tug of social media. It’s probably my biggest energy management struggle.)
So how can you limit the time you spend on social media? Apps like Moment and Screen Time let you track how much you use your phone, and set limits on it as well. Apps like SelfControl let you block certain websites or social sites if they become a problem. iPhones now enable you to control screen time too.
Turn off all the screen and sound notifications you can, and silence your phone and computer if possible. You may also want to keep your phone away from your desk entirely since its mere presence can be extremely tempting and distracting.
MANAGE YOUR STRESS BETTER
Aligning your sleep cycle with your circadian rhythm and your workday with your ultradian rhythm are two components of managing your energy. The third is learning how to handle stress.
If you get great sleep but then feel like a hunted deer all day long, you’re going to feel exhausted. Mental and emotional stress—and even too much physical stress, like overexercising—is super draining. Whether you’re worrying about money, dodging energy vampires, doing a job you hate, eating too little, or not recovering enough from exercise, you might sleep like a champ but still drag through your day.
Cortisol surges, which you learned about earlier, need to be balanced by rest and recovery. The pressures of modern life to be “on” all the time and to contend with unchecked stress can have negative outcomes you might not expect, such as increased cravings, low sex drive, and chronic infections.
It’s all about defusing stress when it happens, not crafting a stress-free life. Much like strengthening a muscle, when we experience a healthy amount of stress and recover from it, we get stronger. Too little stress can lead to a failure to thrive whereas too much stress can lead to burnout. Limiting unnecessary stressors, getting clear about what’s in your control (and not), and adding stress relievers to your routine are all vital.
Positive stress—technically called eustress—is something that provides a benefit. A very simple example is lifting weights. During a strength training session, your muscles sustain microscopic tears. Your body repairs this damage and you recover from the stress. The key is that you back off and allow for recovery. That’s how you get stronger.
What you experience as eustress is personal. For example, the idea of embarking on a solo trip around the world may be exciting and stressful in a good way for you, prompting you to put your finances in order, renew your passport, and get the right vaccinations. On the other hand, the idea of traveling itself—let alone around the world!—could be utterly paralyzing.
There are so many kinds of stress. As you saw from the previous example, exercise can be a source of stress, especially if you work out too intensely or too often. Food can be a stressor if you’re eating those foods that irritate your gut or cause inflammation, like sugar, vegetable oils, and processed foods. Constant worry and anxiety about dieting is also a stressor, as are environmental toxins, crazy relationships, and even positive life events like getting married or buying a house.
My point? You need to balance it with recovery. One way is to turn down the sympathetic nervous system and tap into the parasympathetic nervous system instead. When you find yourself getting lost in a loop of stress, what I call “brain drain,” the cycle of negative thinking can spiral out of control fast. You start to think, I suck, my life sucks, everything sucks . . . You quickly get overwhelmed. And when you’re overwhelmed, it’s impossible to think clearly, calmly, or creatively.
Instead, turn on your parasympathetic system—just as you do before you eat. A simple way to do this is to change the way you breathe. Diaphragmatic breathing, or belly breathing, activates the vagus nerve, which travels all the way from your gut to your brain stem. (In fact, it’s the longest nerve of the autonomic nervous system.) This diaphragmatic breathing technique is powerful, plus you can do it anywhere and nobody will even know.
I like to sit, soften my belly (no sucking it in!), and breathe deeply, letting my belly expand out. I picture my diaphragm—the sheet of muscle under the lungs—descending down toward my belly button like an elevator, and I bring in as much air as I can through my nose. Sometimes I hold it briefly—counting anywhere from one to four—then I slowly release the breath through my nose, imagining my diaphragm traveling back up toward my heart. Try to do at least five of these deep breaths when you feel yourself getting stressed.
Stop, Breathe, and Do
The body’s stress response meant survival or death in our hunter-gatherer days. But in the modern world, you’re more likely to worry about money, relationships, your health, the future, the planet, or hitting your macros—rather than fighting off a predator. These worries are amplified, and instead of being brief, they’re often unrelenting. When you live under chronic stress, your body constantly releases blood sugar, then churns out insulin to deal with it. Chronic stress and inflammation are linked with diseases, including cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and cancer.
In response to stress, you can put the brakes on your sympathetic nervous system and instead engage the parasympathetic by taking what I call an SBD—stop, breathe, and do—break.
You stop by being present where you are, checking in with your body to feel areas of tension, and recognizing that you’re not in any physical danger. Pay attention to your body’s stress signals. Some people get a sick feeling in their gut. Others notice that their breathing gets shallow, or they feel tense in their shoulders and neck. I get a tight feeling in my throat. When I notice it, I tap my fingertips together to help me get back into my body and remember that I’m right here instead of caught up in the maelstrom in my head. My friend Erin focuses on the sensation of her feet being rooted to the ground to get physically present.
Next, you breathe by engaging in diaphragmatic belly breathing, which stimulates the parasympathetic rest-and-digest system and lowers the stress response.
And finally, you do by engaging in something creative, using your hands, and/or doing something you enjoy. You might work in your garden, write in your journal, chop vegetables for dinner, sing, or play a musical instrument.
Stress closes off your thinking like virtual blinders, but taking an SBD break expands your mind to see more possibilities. These kinds of breaks help restore your energy and give you the room to disengage from stress. The point isn’t to have zero stress forever but to limit chronic stress and defuse the stress you do experience. Work actively to reduce the stressful things in your life, including taking junk food out of your diet and replacing it with nourishing food. Declutter your home or workspace, avoid energy vampires, or start a simple daily ritual like gratitude journaling.
Often the stress we face is self-created. Sometimes it can’t be helped, but a lot of the time we worry about shit that doesn’t truly matter. All it takes is a shift in perspective—which might sound simple, but it’s not always easy.
While we’ve been focusing on how you eat, how you move, and how to manage your energy, we’re about to change gears again—and look inside. In the next chapter, you’ll learn about the importance of your mind and how to shift your outlook for the better.