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Chapter 1: What common stressors do people face in daily life?
Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I'm just going to take a wild guess and assume you feel exactly like I do right now. You're overwhelmed. You're thinking about all the things that you need to get done. You're worried about someone in your family. You feel this constant pressure at work. Every day, the things that pop up that you have to deal with are endless.
Plus, you're carrying what feels like the weight of the world with you because the headlines are horrible and you have no idea what to do about the problems you see in the world. I feel the exact same way. So I reached out to one of the world's leading medical experts on stress and resilience to give us both advice on what to do at a moment like this.
And she's gonna tell both of us, whatever is going on right now, you can handle it. Things will get better. You're not gonna go through this alone. And you were built to be resilient. So whatever it is that you're going through, I want you to know you're in the right place. You're listening to the exact thing you need to hear, and you're going to get the support you deserve.
You're about to learn research-backed tools that will help you dial down your stress, and our expert will walk you step-by-step through exactly what you need to do when life feels like this. She'll even prove to you that, yes, it's even possible to find moments of joy, meaning, and purpose while you do. Because the fact is, you can handle this. And after listening today, you will.
Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I am so excited that you're here. It's such an honor to spend time with you and to be together. And if you're a new listener, I want to take a moment and personally welcome you to the Mel Robbins Podcast family.
I cannot wait for you to meet today's guest, Dr. Tara Narula, because she's here to teach you how to handle the stress and pressure of life right now and become more resilient. Dr. Narula is a board-certified cardiologist and director of the Women's Heart Program at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. She's been practicing medicine for over two decades.
She's a professor of cardiovascular medicine at the Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra. Dr. Narula is also an Emmy Award-winning medical journalist who is the chief medical correspondent for ABC News.
Dr. Narula earned her bachelor's degree at Stanford, her medical degree with the highest honors from the University of Southern California, completed her residency at Harvard University and Brigham and Women's Hospital, and her cardiology fellowship at Weill Cornell Medical Center.
Dr. Narula is also a fellow of the American College of Cardiology and the New York Times bestselling author of the book, The Healing Power of Resilience. Please help me welcome Dr. Tara Narula to the Mel Robbins Podcast. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Well, thank you for writing this extraordinary bestselling book, The Healing Power of Resilience.
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Chapter 2: How can we build resilience like a muscle?
This is in the introduction. And you talk about resilience. You say, resilience is not the capacity to return to the same place you began after trauma or tragedy. Neither our minds nor our bodies are built like rubber bands. We do not bounce back. We are influenced and affected. We recover, we grow, we change. This, I believe, is what the core of resilience is, the ability to embrace change.
We are constantly being shaped by our experiences, change affecting the composition as a whole, even as we remain ourselves. We are the marble. And we are the angel. Exactly. We're both. It's so beautiful because oftentimes I think when you hear the word resilience and it's kind of thrown around loosely a lot, I always just thought it was the ability to bounce back.
Or to not feel, to just put my head down in the sand and keep going forward without processing what's happened, you know? Yeah. Just keep moving.
And you're saying, no, inside you is the ability to adapt to the change and not lose yourself, but to remember how to and to learn how to still find joy and wonder and connection despite all of what's going on. It's a different version of you, right? It's beautiful.
And that, you know, what I also love about our conversation today is that you have very specific skills that you're going to walk us through, a bunch of them, that will help you adapt and change when this happens. Can you give me some examples?
of smaller moments, like maybe that happened to kids in school or that happened at work when you get an email or just like the little things that are also quietly building resilience in you?
Yeah, I mean, Mel, it's everywhere, right? And so the common denominator, and again, the reason it was important for me to talk about this is stress. So our lives are full of stressful events.
Now you're a cardiologist.
Yes, I am.
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Chapter 3: What are effective tools to manage stress?
That's all turned on when you're under stress. But if you counteract that, and that's where things like therapy and meditation and mindfulness can come in, or your thought process, you're not allowing that pathway to turn on. You're turning it off, number one.
Number two, when you're not living in a state of stress, you're actually making lifestyle choices, which we haven't talked about, that help you live a healthier life. So you are exercising. You are eating healthier. You are getting more sleep. You're not missing your medical appointments. You're not maybe using substances. So it all kind of goes together.
What's happening on the inside, you're dialing everything down, but also you're making choices that are also helping you be healthier and lower your stress response. If you exercise, you're decreasing your stress, right? If you sleep more, you're turning down a lot of these hormones. So it all goes hand in hand.
I talk to my patients about sitting down with a therapist and many times they say, well, I don't have anxiety or I'm not depressed. I'm just caregiving and I'm under stress. And I say, that's enough. That's enough of a reason to sit down with someone you can just download on.
Somebody objective who can be there for you so you can just let go of your thoughts because that in and of itself will lower your stress. You are allowed to spend an hour a week or once every two weeks talking to someone who's in your corner to help you. So therapy can be just to help you through a stressful time.
Maybe you don't do it forever, but do it while you're in this period of stress to help you get through the caregiving journey. And then people are really surprised when I say they're like, really? I managed to see a therapist for that? Yes. Yes, you absolutely should.
Let's talk about just like ways to calm yourself when you get that wave, you know, like comes in waves, whether you're like, oh my God, the text that comes in or, you know, layoffs are coming. I need to see you in the office tomorrow morning or a million ways you could feel stressed out. Is there something that you love, Dr. Garula, that you do when you feel the quick wave?
Yes. I love exercise. So for me, finding a way to get my heart rate up and exercise and move my body is my stress relief. So I find time to carve that out. Being outside, I feel like in nature is a very underrated way to feel better. We have a home in Connecticut, which is very rural. Just taking a walk, seeing the birds, seeing the trees, getting the fresh air. I feel like nature is...
extremely powerful. And then, you know, breathing exercises. And I think some of the techniques that I've learned about, you know, kind of taking five breaths in and then letting them out, you know, a lot of these things we can do, the breath work can actually help sort of, again, in the moment, really turn down the stress response.
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