Introduction

The Crash

Another exhausting day, another sleepless night. As your head crashes onto the pillow (or couch cushion), you can't possibly fathom how someone could be so physically tired and mentally wired at the same time. You begin a conversation with yourself—the same one that took place the night before, and the night before that one, promising that tomorrow will be different. That you will finally get a decent night's sleep, wake up rested, and make better choices for yourself. You'll go to the gym. Start eating better. Take more breaks. Pick up that meditation practice you've been meaning to start. Go to yoga. Drink more water. Stop the coffee habit—well, maybe reduce it a bit.

Suddenly, the thoughts of all the things that need to get done tomorrow start to beat at your busy brain. Chaotic chatter. Mental gymnastics. To-do lists, timelines, deadlines —the worry begins to flood your body as your temperature rises, your heartbeat increases, and you feel like someone is sitting on top of your chest. Panic sets in.

Did you turn the lights off? Set the coffeepot to start in the morning? Hear back from your boss about that proposal? Speaking of proposals, don't forget to buy a gift for your cousin's shindig this weekend. Oh crud, did you make those hotel reservations? Don't forget to check in 24 hours early to get your seats. Seats…did you RSVP for the networking event tomorrow night? It's last minute; you'd better do that right now.

You get up to turn on the computer, and your already overwhelmed brain is now being stimulated by the notion that there is some critical emergency (you'd hate to piss off the executive director of the networking group, again) while the glare of your computer screen lights it up with neural noise. You try not to read anything while checking your e-mail but can't help glancing at the long list of communications that have arrived since you shut it down only an hour earlier. You convince yourself that if you do a couple of quick e-mails now you'll save yourself time in the morning. Before you know it, the clock strikes 1:00 AM and you realize you won't get those 8 hours you'd promised yourself earlier in the evening. You haven't gotten a minute of shut-eye, and you're already telling yourself you'll start tomorrow night. The cycle continues.

But is it that bad? I mean, you've likely been operating this way for some time now. Although you don't enjoy the hobbies you used to, find it nearly impossible to make quality time for friends and family, and feel drained and distracted all day, you're able to make it work. You've enjoyed plenty of success, and it's not like you have more stress than anyone else these days. So who are you to make taking care of yourself a priority?

Welcome to the human energy crisis—the epidemic of our time. We're running on empty, and the problem is not that we don't know what to do; it's that we don't have the energy to put any of the practices into place. We know we should eat better. We know we should move our body more regularly. We know we should get more sleep, should take more breaks, and would feel better if we had a greater depth of social connections. It's certainly not rocket science. But what I've learned in over a decade of consulting with organizations about health and performance initiatives is that common sense does not mean common practice.

There is not enough time in the day to get it all done. There never will be. This perception of not having enough—whether it be time, money, food, energy, or love—sends a message to the brain that there is a potential emergency. This immediately triggers our innate stress response, which is designed to motivate us to get more of what we need. The problem is, if we never sense that we have enough, we will always be in a state of chronic stress, whether we recognize it or not.

The current human energy crisis is causing us to repeatedly beat up our operating systems. This not only damages our productivity and performance, but it also chips away at our health and happiness. What's worse, the lack of real energy has created a deficit that only seems to be filled by false sources of energy, whether it's coffee and energy drinks to get up or alcohol and sleeping pills to come back down. Like a credit card purchase, we are able to ignore the ever-increasing energy deficit building up at a cellular level in ways such as chronic inflammation, yo-yo metabolism, and cortisol buildup as long as we don't take time to open the bill.

Everything about the human operating system is designed to oscillate—from heartbeats to brain waves to blood sugar fluctuations. Yet most of us live our lives like a flatline. We put the pedal to the metal from the moment our alarm jolts us out of bed, just as we feel like we've finally drifted to sleep. The problem is not only that we're constantly on the go but that our stress response also causes us to have one foot simultaneously on the brake, grinding our gears. The constant perception that we don't have enough—time, money, energy, and so on—prompts the brain to trigger a neurochemical cascade that puts our entire system on high alert 24/7. The results of this are deadly.

Although we know that stress kills (and if you didn't already, you certainly will by the end of this book), we haven't been able to find a solution that works. There are three main reasons for this. First, change, even positive change, requires energy. Although we know stress is bad for us and wastes precious energy resources, trying to change our thoughts and behavioral patterns may cost even more energy. So the brain quickly talks us out of making the effort. If we're already operating in survival mode by conserving energy, the last thing the brain wants to do is spend more energy trying to change what seems to be working.

Second, our lack of energy has made us neurochemically dependent on sources of stress to provide us with the stimulation we need to maneuver through life. Stress is addictive; it acts on the same brain regions as other addictive substances and behaviors, such as sugar, gambling, shopping, and sex. It tells our system that being on high alert is a great idea and something we need to continue to do. We get a rush from stress, craving things that are novel even if they're not necessarily good for us. That rush propels us through the daily grind and can even cause us to wait until the last minute for a greater stress buzz and what we perceive to be improvements in focus and attention.

Finally, programs of the past have looked at ways to manage stress itself—to try to shift the external cause of what ails us. In reality, the only thing we have control over is our relationship with stress. Stress will always be there, and if you think you're stress free, you can be certain that another storm cloud is on its way. That's the nature of life. Stress is not the problem; our response to stress is what robs us of our health, happiness, and potential for success. This is why we must transform our relationship with stress so that we can become more resilient and even use stress for our benefit.

The Stressaholic Recovery Process: Recharge Your Energy, and Then Reprogram Your Life

Two key shifts must happen to break free from stress addiction. First, we need to recalibrate our operating system by replenishing necessary energy at the most basic levels: chemical and cellular. We must then reprogram our lifestyle by rewiring our habits of thought and behavior.

The first three steps of the stressaholic recovery process are designed to help you recharge your energy by (1) eliminating unnecessary stress and stimulation; (2) nourishing the brain and body with energy-enhancing nutrients, such as glucose, oxygen, and positive endorphins; and (3) strengthening neural connections and overall mind-body fitness to increase your available energy supply. This recharge process shifts your system out of deficit-based survival mode and into a more opportunity-based state that is resilient and primed to grow rather than break down from stress.

The final two steps of the stressaholic recovery process help you reprogram your habits, both in how you think and how you act. First, we train your brain to have a healthier, more positive perspective of the world around you, which makes stress more manageable. With adequate energy in the tank and an optimistic mindset, you'll be able to recognize stress as an opportunity for growth rather than a threat to survival. In the final step, we look at ways to establish healthy oscillation in your routines at home and at work, creating the ups and downs that make up your optimal performance pulse and allowing you to be productive, creative, and engaged while getting adequate rest and recovery to stabilize energy. This involves setting boundaries, establishing expectations, using the right attitude, and allocating adequate time to create habits—what I call BEATs. We discuss real-world examples of individuals and organizations that have created BEATs to help them thrive amid chaos.

The stressaholic recovery process is broken into five simple but challenging steps. Together, these steps build your physical, mental, and emotional resilience toward stress, allowing it to build you up instead of breaking you down:

Depending on the level of your stress addiction and the amount of time and energy you have available to work your way through the recovery process, this program can be done in three minutes, three days, three weeks, or three months. The more you can invest in optimizing your personal energy management through this program, the greater the results.

At the conclusion of each step of the process is one specific exercise that will be the core of your practice: a simple meditation or visualization that you can read and use in silence or download from my website (www.synergyprograms.com/stressaholic) for a guided experience. These simple techniques help you build a toolbox of practices you can return to repeatedly as you strengthen your resilience through training.

Although we can't often control the external factors that contribute to stress, we can create a stronger, more stress-resilient operating system—body, mind, and spirit. We do this by eliminating excess stress, nourishing with essential and supportive nutrients, and training our brains and bodies with strategic exercises that enable us to function at our best, despite difficult circumstances. Then, we improve our operating system by changing our perspective of stress to one that is more positive and developing rituals and habits that support our new way of life. We can't make stress go away, but we can transform our codependent relationship with it.