The Mel Robbins PodcastIf You’re Feeling Uncertain & Stressed, You Need to Hear This | #1 Stress Doctor
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
60 min read · 11,999 words- 0:00 – 6:42
Introduction
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Things happen. Things go wrong, things go bad. We face challenges. A lot of people think, "If I get hit with something, I'm gonna fall apart." We are so much stronger than we think we are.
- MRMel Robbins
Dr. Narula is a board-certified cardiologist. She's here to teach you how to handle the stress and pressure of life right now and become more resilient.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
There are patients where I can't give them back the heart cells that have died. I can't give them back the movement of their arm when they've had a stroke. We can't go back, but we can still help them find a different path towards meaning in their life if they have that flexible thinking.
- MRMel Robbins
We talk about stress, and it's like, "I feel stressed," but what is stress, actually?
- TNDr. Tara Narula
And I think people just think of stress as this invisible force that we don't really understand. But Mel, a whole cascade of events happens inside your body, particularly in your cardiovascular system, which are all negative, and cardiovascular disease is already the leading cause of death for men and women. So you add to that the stress, and it's just a recipe for disaster. This is so important, and we are not talking about it.
- MRMel Robbins
Why is hope important, and what does it actually mean?
- TNDr. Tara Narula
You have to find hope in the small moments of every single day. It's not losing the vision of what you want for your life. It's holding on to that.
- MRMel Robbins
Are you a subscriber? If that subscribe button is lit up, it means you're not. My goal is that 50% of you are subscribers, and my team showed me that 57% of you who watch here on YouTube are not. So if it's lit up, do your friend Mel Robbins a favor and just hit subscribe. It helps me reach my goal. It's free. That way, you don't miss a thing. Thanks for doing that. I really appreciate it. Please help me welcome Dr. Tara Narula to The Mel Robbins Podcast.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.
- MRMel Robbins
Well, thank you for writing this extraordinary bestselling book, The Healing Power of Resilience. I cannot wait to dive into the research, the tools. But I wanna start by having you explain to me, how could my life be different and feel different if I really take to heart everything that you are about to teach us today and I apply it?
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Yeah. You know, Mel, we have one precious life, one, and in the time that we're here on Earth, everybody wants to be able to take the most out of every moment, every experience, every day. I know that's what I want. That's what my family wants. That's what my patients tell me they want, is that quality of life. The problem is that, as you know, during life, things happen. Things go wrong. Things go bad. We face challenges, and so for many people, that challenge, that traumatic event, whatever that may be, a divorce, a financial loss, a medical diagnosis, it stuns us. And we get frozen and stuck, and we're not able to really-
- MRMel Robbins
Hmm
- TNDr. Tara Narula
... take all of the things out of life that we want. And so, you know, resilience is really about finding your way to that space where despite what happens to you in life, you can still cull and glean and take everything amazing from your experience in life and not let life take over you. And you know, I, I obviously have so many examples of resilience that I've seen in my life as a doctor, as a journalist, as a friend. I think about often, um, a friend of mine actually from college. We met Stanford our intern year. She's from Massachusetts. And she was single. She wanted to have a child for many years.
- MRMel Robbins
Mm-hmm.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
And she finally went through IVF. She got pregnant, and about three months into her pregnancy, she called me and told me she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
- MRMel Robbins
Oh, my God.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
So if you can imagine, you know, waiting and pushing and struggling so hard to have a baby, finding out during your pregnancy you have ovarian cancer, and it was one of those moments where, I mean, she, she had a choice, right? Where do you go at this unimaginable moment? And she was resilience personified. She finished her pregnancy. She delivered her beautiful baby. She lived those last two years that she was alive with her daughter full, and she wrote about her journey. She was present for her daughter. She made plans for what would happen for after she passed. It was this incredible, beautiful story, my friend, Kaz, as we called her, of resilience despite the literally unimaginable happening. And so that's what I want for people. No matter what I get hit with or slammed with, I can still enjoy my life. I can thrive. That is the word that I think about.
- MRMel Robbins
Just in that story of your dear friend Kaz, I think every one of us can think of somebody in our lives or somebody that we've seen as they've had tragedy hit their lives. They somehow seem to be able to rise to the moment and meet that moment in an extraordinarily inspiring and kind of, in some ways, jaw-dropping way.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
And yet, you wonder, personally, I don't think I could do that. Like, if that were me, I would, I, I would be-
- TNDr. Tara Narula
[laughs]
- MRMel Robbins
... breadcrumbs on the floor.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Exactly. [laughs]
- MRMel Robbins
And yet, we are all one phone call, one diagnosis-
- TNDr. Tara Narula
That's right
- MRMel Robbins
... one accident, one tragedy away from having life run you over. And I love in that story how you combine the medical piece, the hope and aspiration of getting pregnant and going through IVF, the devastating news, and the fact that despite, and I thank you for saying the word despite, despite all that, there is still this well of strength, this fight that can be brought out inside you when this happens.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
And when I started to dive into the research psychologically, what fascinated me was exactly what you said, that I think a lot of people think, "If I get hit with something, I'm gonna fall apart." And when I interviewed psychologists and they said to me, "No, that that is actually the small fraction of people that develop PTSD in the setting of trauma. The majority of people are going to be okay when something happens." And I thought, "Why don't we tell people that?" [laughs] That's actually really empowering to know that no matter what happens, I'm gonna be okay. And then the second thing they taught me, which is that resilience is a skill. It is something that is not just fixed. You either have it or you don't. It is something that you can absolutely strengthen and build-
- MRMel Robbins
Huh
- TNDr. Tara Narula
... just like a muscle. And again, it was like-Again, here's something that's really powerful information that people don't know. And so it was really important for me to kind of tell people both of those things. You have this real amazing gift inside you, but also, you can s- you can practice it, you can grow it, you can build it. Um, and that's a really important, empowering thing for people to understand.
- 6:42 – 11:08
What Is Resilience? (How to Build Mental Strength)
- MRMel Robbins
Well, Dr. N- Narula, maybe where we should start is what is resilience? Like, how do you define it?
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Yeah, and that's another interesting question. And I think when you listen to or read the psychology research, they all have different definitions.
- MRMel Robbins
Yep.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Um, and so for me, it was important to kind of cultivate my own definition. And what became clear to me was what we just talked about, which is resilience is the ability, in my opinion, to retain your wonder, joy, excitement, investment, engagement in life, despite what happens to you. So you are not ever going to go back to where you were. You're going to move in a different direction. And this, again, comes out of my clinical experience. You know, when I am telling someone who has no idea they have heart disease, that they have coronary artery disease or plaque in their arteries, and they thought they were completely healthy, or I'm telling someone, "Your heart function is 20%, not 50%. You have heart failure," the look that I see on their face, Mel, is the same every time. It is kind of a look of just fear and paralysis. And they ask me, "When am I gonna be myself again?" That's what they wanna know.
- MRMel Robbins
What do you say?
- TNDr. Tara Narula
And I say, "You will never, ever be yourself again. You will-"
- MRMel Robbins
I don't want that answer.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
You will-
- MRMel Robbins
[laughs] I mean, I don't want you to tell me that.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
You will never be yourself again, but, and here's the big thing, you can be a beautiful, different version of you.
- MRMel Robbins
Mm.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Your life can be an incredible different version or chapter. And you know, I think a lot about the quote of Michelangelo, which I used in the book, about how he said he carved the marble to set the angel free. He saw the angel in the marble, and he carved until he set the angel free. This idea that, you know, we are this piece of marble, and life is sort of changing us, and we're evolving, but there's still something beautiful that can come out of it. And I just thought that's such a beautiful visual image if we could just think of our lives that way, that change is inevitable, adversity's inevitable, bad things are gonna happen, but we can still emerge as this beautiful creation.
- MRMel Robbins
Well, if you hold onto that vision, that there is an angel inside you-
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Mm-hmm
- MRMel Robbins
... to be set free, it is very empowering.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Right.
- MRMel Robbins
And what I also love about the way that you're explaining this is that you're not saying that you deserve to have this happen. You're not saying that you needed to have this happen. Like, I hate it when people are like, "Everything happens for a reason."
- TNDr. Tara Narula
[laughs]
- MRMel Robbins
I'm like, well, sometimes things happen because it's just really horrendous-
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Exactly
- MRMel Robbins
... what's happening. You didn't deserve it. You have to find a reason to keep going-
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Mm-hmm
- MRMel Robbins
... despite what happened. I wanna read you from your bestselling book. 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."
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Exactly. We're both.
- MRMel Robbins
It's so beautiful-
- TNDr. Tara Narula
[laughs]
- MRMel Robbins
... because oftentimes, I think when you hear the word resilience, and it's kinda thrown around loosely a lot, I always just thought it was the ability to bounce back.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Or to not feel, to just put my head down in the sand and keep going forward without processing what's happened, you know?
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Just keep moving.
- 11:08 – 16:50
What Causes Stress? How Stress Affects Your Body
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Yes, I am. [laughs]
- MRMel Robbins
Could you medically explain to me what stress is?
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Yep.
- MRMel Robbins
'Cause I think, you know, we talk about stress, and it's like, "I feel stress."
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Right.
- MRMel Robbins
"I feel stressed because of the headlines. I feel stressed because of what's happening to my kid at school. I feel stressed because, you know, I'm mad at my spouse right now."
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
But what is stress, actually?
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Stress in and of itself is not a bad thing.
- MRMel Robbins
Okay.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
We all need some stress in our lives.
- MRMel Robbins
Why?
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Stress can be positive. Because it can push us.
- MRMel Robbins
[laughs] Why?
- TNDr. Tara Narula
It can push us to evolve and change.
- MRMel Robbins
Okay.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
The point is that there's a tipping point-
- MRMel Robbins
Hmm
- TNDr. Tara Narula
... where the stress then becomes negative. One of my favorite professors from Stanford, Robert Sapolsky, wrote a book called Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. And he studies primates, um, and studies the stress response and, you know, talks very, uh, openly about this idea that our stress response is meant to be a place or a function for us to survive, so that if we're escaping a lion in the wild, we turn it on. Our heart rate goes up. Our blood pressure goes up. Our respiratory rate goes up. We turn off all the non-essential functions, our digestion, our reproduction, our growth, so we can live. The issue is that when you're in the wild and you're escaping an animal and then you escape, your stress response goes off. In our current-day society, we turn on the stress response for all those things you just talked about.
- MRMel Robbins
Hmm.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
We get a bill in the mail that's... difficult to handle. We hear something at school, our friend says something to us, we feel bullied. We, uh, you know, go to work and our boss is, you know, tough on us. E- every little insult during our day causes a stress reaction, and you can imagine how damaging this can be to our bodies on the inside. So the point is, even though we have this stress response, guess what? We are [laughs] not victim to it. We can mount a resilient response. We can actually turn it off, dial it down, and counteract it, right? That's the purpose of the resilient response. But I think it's important to understand how negative and destructive stress can be. Um, and I hear it from my patients all day long, that they're stressed.
- MRMel Robbins
Dr. Narula, how can a person tell the difference, just, like, normal everyday stress of modern life and stress and pressure that is becoming a problem?
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Yeah. Well, the stress is there all the time every day, and so it's really, again, our reaction to it. So if you are able to, you know, take on the stress and then within a few minutes you feel the same way that you did, it's probably not an issue, but that's not how it works for most of us. And so for most of us, it is that that stress response stays on. We sort of feel our muscles clench. We're not breathing as much. You know, our heart rate is a little bit faster. Our mind continues to cycle and think about it. You know, so it's when that's happening over and over again dur- throughout the course of the day that it becomes an issue. And I will say this, Mel, I mean, there is such a thing as a, a stress-induced heart attack from an acute stress. Um, women tend to be more prone to this than men, so even acute stress can cause problems. But yes, we think more about that chronic, low-grade, constant stress that's happening day after day, couple hours during the day, on and off, on and off. So I always tell people you need to find time to turn your stress response off, and whether that is a walk, music, meditation, exercise, breathing exercises, meeting a friend. Like, those moments where you're dialing it down from 10 to zero, that is going to help your body on the inside be able to move through the stress.
- MRMel Robbins
Dr. Narula, I would love to have you speak to the person listening and to me, who not only just feels the pressure of their own life and the stress of getting through the day and dealing with things going on in their family, but the ongoing pressure and stress of all the events going on in the world, all of the global unrest, just this tremendous pressure that comes from a sense of hopelessness-
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Mm-hmm
- MRMel Robbins
... and a lack of power and, uh, an inability to, to feel like you can do anything to change. Like, why does paying attention to your resilience, why is it critical in a moment like now?
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Because you can't change the world around you, right? You cannot stop what's happening around you from happening. You can't change those stressors. I tell people, "You know, you, maybe you can't leave your job that's stressful."
- MRMel Robbins
Right.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
"You just can't. You can't, you know, get out of the situation." We don't have control over that.
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah.
- 16:50 – 26:40
What to Do When Life Gets Hard
- MRMel Robbins
Well, one of the things that you write about just right in the introduction, and we're gonna unpack all of the skills, but one of the first one is getting to a point where you accept your current situation. And on that note of acceptance, right? Because it is one of the stages of grief to just be in denial of, uh, uh, it, "This can't be happening. How could I possibly have ovarian cancer? I just got pregnant. This can't be happening. We live in the United S- How is this happening here? This can't be happening. I work so hard. How am I losing my job? What do you mean that there are layoffs?" Acceptance doesn't mean you're giving up, right?
- TNDr. Tara Narula
No.
- MRMel Robbins
What does it mean?
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Yeah, and this, I, you know, in laying out the book and figuring out what skills, what blueprint did I wanna give people, acceptance had to be the first one.
- MRMel Robbins
Oof.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
It had to be the first tool, because you can't do anything else until you've accepted what happened. And one of the women that I interviewed for my CBS News story, who I also feature in the book, is Lucy Hone, who is an incredible resilience researcher of her own right. She studies resilience. She writes about it. She talks about it. Her 12-year-old daughter died in a car accident.
- MRMel Robbins
Oh.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
And suddenly, the resilience researcher had to use the skills that she had learned to move forward, and she's given one of the most watched TED Talks in the country, and the first thing she says is, "Adversity doesn't discriminate." And I think that is such an important thing. We're all gonna get hit. At some point in time, something bad's gonna happen, but we can't change that. We have to accept it. And so to your question, when I was in medical school, I had my own experience where I had to learn acceptance. I was in my second year of medical school. I was in these, uh, lecture halls. Started to see colored lights in the bottom part of my right eye when they would dim the lecture hall lights. Didn't know what was going on. Went home to Miami over Christmas break and suddenly discovered through a battery of tests that I had a visual field loss in the bottom part of my right eye.I was a healthy 23-year-old, and suddenly I had b- was blind in the bottom part of my eye. Nobody knew why. They told me I might have had a stroke. I might have multiple sclerosis. So I went back to medical school thinking, "I might have multiple sclerosis. I might not be able to walk, see, finish medical school." It was, Mel, the absolute worst, most scary moment in my life because, again, I had fought really hard to get to medical school.
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
I was excited to be there, and now I thought the whole trajectory of my life is gonna go in a different direction. And my mother, um, sent me on a card in the mail the Serenity Prayer, and the first line is, "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." And I read her words, and she called me. She said, "You can spend every day, the next two years of your medical school, worrying about what might happen and wasting that time, or you can imagine it might never happen, your worst thoughts-
- MRMel Robbins
Hmm
- TNDr. Tara Narula
... and just put one foot in front of the other and go day after day." And that advice really saved me, and that is advice I give many of my patients when things happen to them, is put one foot in front of the other. This happened. Now we're gonna move forward day by day by day. And the farther you get away from the event, the further the pain and the fear becomes. Just a few weeks ago, I had a patient, um, who went in for a routine surgery. Should've been in and out. Something went wrong in the operating room, and he came out 70% blind.
- MRMel Robbins
Oh.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
And I saw him, you know, six months ago in the aftermath of that, and he was sort of broken. I mean, he didn't, he was, a- as anybody would be. And then I saw him a couple weeks ago, and there was a lightness to him, and he was smiling. And I said to him, you know, "How did you get to this point? You know, it's been six months, and you seem so different from where you were." And he said to me two things. He said one was acceptance.
- MRMel Robbins
Hmm.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
"I couldn't change what happened, and I had to learn to accept it." And then he said social support, his friends. Those two things. But acceptance is the beginning of your journey. It is the opening of the door to everything else.
- MRMel Robbins
So for somebody who's listening right now, and you have felt so much pressure, you've been under stress, you can't even remember a time when you weren't stressed. Maybe you're caring for aging parents. Maybe you've got the new class of stress, which is parenting young kids.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
That's me. [laughs]
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah, you know, maybe, like, y- there's just, you don't even remember a time. Is what you're about to teach us for that person, and can you talk to the person who doesn't even remember life when they didn't feel pressure?
- TNDr. Tara Narula
It is for everyone. You know, what, what I'm gonna tell you is for everyone. It, the, resilience is something we can all use, and it is so critically important because we have stress at every angle, at every point in our life. Caregiver stress is real.
- MRMel Robbins
Right.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
And again, it's something I see especially in a lot of my female patients. In the last month, I had three female patients who are married to male patients of mine talk to me about the stress that they are having because they're caregiving for their husbands, their kids, uh, and everyone else in their life. I had one whose husband was diagnosed with Parkinson's, and she's trying to manage his failing health and dementia that's developing. Another one whose husband had a stroke-
- MRMel Robbins
Hmm
- TNDr. Tara Narula
... is not, no longer who he was. And the third one was a woman who said her husband had his own mental health issues the last six months. And so all three of these women were talking to me about the massive stress that they were facing being caregivers, and we talked about how to manage that stress and how to handle that stress and the fact that they needed support and help in order to continue to be caregivers to their spouses, but also to protect their, their own health.
- MRMel Robbins
Why do you think it's so hard when you're in the caregiving role to really understand the critical nature of taking care of yourself?
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Because you're so overpowered and overwhelmed by the care and love and empathy and responsibility that you feel for another human being. And so that's an amazing thing, right, to have so much love for someone [laughs] that you're giving up everything.
- MRMel Robbins
Right.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
But you can't, you know? We, we have to take care of ourselves in order to be able to be there for someone else. You have to.
- MRMel Robbins
Why?
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Because it is critical to your survival, and it's going to be critical to the survival of the person that you're caring for.
- 26:40 – 30:08
The Mindset To Help You Through Tough Times
- MRMel Robbins
talk about a flexible mindset being the next step.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
That flexibility of saying, you know, "I thought my life was going down this course, but now it's going down a different course or direction, and I'm okay with that."
- MRMel Robbins
But I'm not okay with that.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
[laughs] Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
Like, that's, that's the problem with the flexible mindset. Like, part of it is, I don't want this.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
I know. And that's where, you know, acceptance commitment therapy and CBT therapy and other forms of mindfulness and meditation can help. But, but truly, you know, again, referencing back to Lucy Hone, who I talked about earlier, you know, she gave a great analogy of, you know, imagining you have these goalposts in front of you. You're kicking the ball in a certain direction through the goal.
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
And she said she realized when her 12-year-old daughter died and she still had her husband and sons, like, she had to live for them. She had to keep going, so she picked up the goalpost and moved it somewhere else.
- MRMel Robbins
Hmm.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
So this-- And I thought that was such a great, easy-
- MRMel Robbins
So good
- TNDr. Tara Narula
... to understand image. You can still have a goal. You can still aim for it. It's just in a different place, right? And I see this a lot in medicine. You know, there are patients where I can't give them back the heart cells that have died. I can't give them back the movement of their arm-
- MRMel Robbins
Hmm
- TNDr. Tara Narula
... when they've had a stroke. We can't go back, but we can still help them find a different path towards meaning in their life if they have that flexible thinking. I thought I might be able to do this. Okay, I can't do that, but I'm gonna shift, and I'm gonna do this. And so really that flexible thinking is sort of the second key to remodeling, reshaping the vision for what you thought your life was going to be into something else, and that's okay. But the point is, you know, whatever life hits you with, if you can pick up that goalpost and put it somewhere else and know you can still move forward towards it, that image is, is, can be lifesaving.
- MRMel Robbins
Dr. Narula, I personally feel that the image of the goalpost is probably gonna cause the single biggest change in people's lives that listen to this. And as you're listening, I want you to think about, just in your own life, are you still trying to aim for a goalpost that's no longer there?
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Right.
- MRMel Robbins
Because you can see how if you're looking at a goalpost that's no longer there, you're not gonna find joy. You're not gonna find meaning. You're not gonna find all the things that you deserve in your life if you keep moving in that direction. So from a medical perspective, how does choosing to change the goalpost, accepting that you have a different life now-
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Yeah
- MRMel Robbins
... how does that help you get through a challenge?
- TNDr. Tara Narula
It's like the lighthouse that draws you forward. It pulls you forward. And that kind of goal, we all need that. We all need something to continue to strive for that gives us meaning in life, right?
- MRMel Robbins
Hmm. Mm-hmm.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
We all have our different meanings for why we're here, but I think when you lose that meaning, you lose that sense of like, "I don't know why I'm here," it's, like, kills you on the inside. And so, and, and you feel stressed. But when you say, "Okay, I thought I was here for this reason, but now I'm here for this reason," it, it's like a light that turns on inside.
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Um, and so it's just, you know, it's just a reframing and reshaping of, of what you... Again, the marble and the angel. It's a reframing and reshaping of who you thought you were, what your life thought would be, and re- recognition that, like, no, life is change. It, it is constantly
- 30:08 – 36:36
How to Cope With Major Life Changes
- TNDr. Tara Narula
changing.
- MRMel Robbins
If something in your life has changed, somebody's died, you didn't get into the dream school, you lost your job, the divorce has happened, like, y- here's the diagnosis, your kid's really struggling, and you are so stubborn or scared or whatever that you continue to look at the old life that you wanted, you're creating more stress for yourself.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
That's right. That's right.
- MRMel Robbins
Because you're resisting what's actually happened.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
You're resisting the change. You're fighting against it.
- MRMel Robbins
Yes.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
So, you know, we use the analogy in the book of be the river, not the rock, right? You have to flow with life toGet the most out of life, right? That's, that malleability, that-
- MRMel Robbins
Oh
- TNDr. Tara Narula
... flexibility is really critical. One of the exercises that one of the psychologists I interviewed told me about, which again, I loved 'cause it was very visual, was the identity pie. He said he has his patients draw a circle and cut into the circle pieces of a pie. I'm a mother, I'm a writer, you know, I'm a dog owner, [laughs] I'm an athlete, you know, I'm a baker. And a small slice of the pie is their medical diagnosis. And when you look at that and you see, that's right, I am not my diagnosis. I am so much bigger than that.
- MRMel Robbins
Mm.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
I am so much more than that. And again, it, it lets you see, my life is so much more full, it has so much more meaning, it has so much more, you know, direction for where I can go. It, I'm not stuck in that vision of being a victim of my disease process.
- MRMel Robbins
That's really helpful because you're right, kinda like the goalpost, that when something happens, we kinda laser focus-
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Correct
- MRMel Robbins
... on that thing, and you forget there's all these other aspects to who you are and what your life contains.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
That's right, and what your life can be.
- MRMel Robbins
Wow.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
You have to see that, right?
- MRMel Robbins
Now, what happens, you talked about the kinda be the river, don't be the rock in the river resisting everything. Just kinda, you gotta learn to go with the way that life is taking you. What effect does that have on your stress and on the kind of physical impact in your body when you really start to accept, and you have a flexible mindset, and you use some of these tools, like the identity pie, to say, "Well, I'm more than this diagnosis. I'm more than this moment. I'm the kinda person that can get through something like this"?
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Yeah. Well, two things. I mean, when we turn off the stress response, it means that we are using our parasympathetic, for example-
- MRMel Robbins
Ah
- TNDr. Tara Narula
... nervous system, so the one where we lower our blood pressure.
- MRMel Robbins
So does accepting and does kind of-
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Yes
- MRMel Robbins
... doing these tools, like, help you turn on the parasympathetic-
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Correct
- MRMel Robbins
... response?
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Helps you turn on the parasympathetic-
- MRMel Robbins
It's not just intellectual?
- TNDr. Tara Narula
It's not just intellectual.
- MRMel Robbins
Oh.
- 36:36 – 42:51
Positive Self-Talk (How to Rewire Your Brain for Resilience)
- MRMel Robbins
I'd love to talk about negative and positive self-talk, and how the way that you talk to yourself in your own head can compound the stress and make it worse. What did you discover about the way that negative self-talk versus positive self-talk-
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Mm-hmm
- MRMel Robbins
can increase stress or even have a physiological, like, do damage to you.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Nobody's perfect. We're flawed human beings. Um, but that's okay. And I think the moment we show ourselves the same love and the positive talk that we would show our child or our spouse or anyone else that we care about, that is the moment where we start to, to kind of become more resilient because we see ourselves in the same way that we would see someone that we're caring for as a caregiver. Um, but that positive self-talk is really critical, that self-love.
- MRMel Robbins
Uh, like I w- I always tell people, "You're, you're- I don't know what's gonna happen, but you're not gonna go through this alone, and you are capable-
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Yes
- MRMel Robbins
... of managing this." You are.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
That's right. Yes. You're so much stronger than you think. And that, that is-
- MRMel Robbins
Yes
- TNDr. Tara Narula
... really what the book also was about, was this idea that, like, we are so much stronger than we think we are. We all have this capacity, and we're not gonna crumble and fall apart. We can get through it, again, if we put one foot in front of the other.
- MRMel Robbins
Let's talk about social support because it is one of the pillars in the book, and I know when I'm stressed out-
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Mm-hmm
- MRMel Robbins
... if I'm going through something traumatic, I tend to become a little bit of a hermit.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
And what does love and support from other people do? And, like, how do you get it?
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Social support, again, is something that's so underrated, but so easily accessible to all of us.
- MRMel Robbins
Mm-hmm.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
And, you know, my, my friend, my former resident at the Brigham, Vivek Murthy, [laughs] um, I was his intern. You know, he thankfully, I think, opened our eyes in this country to how negative loneliness can be-
- MRMel Robbins
It can
- TNDr. Tara Narula
... and how important it is for us to cultivate social relationships for our health. Um, the famous study out of Harvard, Robert Waldinger's study that followed men for years, uh, what was it that sort of translated into, you know, the best quality of life? It was the quality of their social connections. It wasn't anything else. And so we have just this growing body of data and literature showing the power of social connection. And I think for a lot of people, you know, they think, "Oh, well, I, I need to have a big group of friends." And so for a lot of my patients, we talk about it doesn't have to be, you know, a large group of friends. It can be one friend that you pick up the phone and call. It can be joining an art class because you love art. And, and so there's so many outlets that we can explore to find that.
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Um, you know, I recently told a story of, again, another patient of mine who retired, and he started smoking marijuana and felt very depressed, wondering, "Where am I going with my life?" And one of his friends said, "You know, Central Park is right there. They have a group, the Central Park, uh, Group, that goes and picks up the garbage and trims the trees, and we meet every, you know, twice a week." And he joined the group. And he said just that one step-
- MRMel Robbins
Huh
- TNDr. Tara Narula
... of joining that group, and now he does it twice a week for about an hour, saved him because it gave him a group of people who he could meet every week. He was outside. Um, and he started to feel so much better about his life. So it's these micro, small changes that we can make, and all of us can do it every single day.
- MRMel Robbins
It is easy to sit on the couch and feel sorry for yourself. It is easy to feel overwhelmed by the state of the world. It is easy, and it's an appropriate response to be shocked by, like, life when it's not how you want it to be.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
That's right.
- MRMel Robbins
But at some point, you gotta do something. And just the social support, going to bingo night-
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Mm
- MRMel Robbins
... joining a... You know, it seems so dumb, but when you're in the throes of the stress and the overwhelm, you don't feel empowered to do it, but it works, and that's an example of you putting a deposit in the bank of resilience.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
It is an investment. You know, and I tell people, resilience training and the skills we're talking about, it's work.
- 42:51 – 1:01:11
What to Do When You Feel Hopeless
- MRMel Robbins
You know, you have a entire chapter, Chapter 9, on the critical importance of finding hope.And I'm reading to you from page 191, "Sometimes a health event can be so scary that a patient can't believe another day will come. Sometimes a diagnosis can be so dire that a patient can't imagine what the next day will look like. When we learn we don't have much future left, or if what lies ahead looks completely unlike the life we have known so far, what happens next? That's when we need hope the most. Hope is the foundation that allows us to build a resilient response in the moment, whatever happens next." What is hope? And why does having hope, especially in moments, whether it's the world at large that feels lost and things feel hopeless, or something going on in your family makes you feel like all is lost, why is hope important, and what does it actually mean, Dr. Narula?
- TNDr. Tara Narula
I had a patient in my office, again, I told you, a wife and a husband. The husband was diagnosed with Parkinson's, and he looked at me, Mel, and he said, "How do I not lose hope?"
- MRMel Robbins
Yes.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
He said to me, "How do I not lose hope?" And you can imagine, as a doctor, that's a very, very hard question to answer. And I'm a cardiologist, and this was about a neurologic degenerative condition. It's not my field. And I, I, but I could see that he was struggling, and his wife was in the room with him. And he said, "I still have so much I wanna write. I love my wife so much. I have so much I wanna do with her." I'm getting, like, emotional thinking about it. "And, and I'm falling apart, you know, from my disease." And so, you know, I just sat there with him and I said, "You know, you have to find hope in the small moments of every single day. So every day that you wake up and you see your wife, and you can say, 'I love you,' and hear her say, 'I love you,' that's hope, right? Every day that you can sit at your computer and still write your book that you're writing-"
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah
- TNDr. Tara Narula
... that's hope. It is the fact that there could be a treatment tomorrow that you don't know about that comes down the pipeline for your condition. It is ju- literally finding those small moments of joy and, and looking for something that you may not know that exists and believing in that.
- MRMel Robbins
Mm.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Something that is further down the future. That, that's hope, and I want you to lean into that," I said to him. "I want you to kind of fall towards the sides of, side of hope and not towards the side of, you know, despair."
- MRMel Robbins
You know, one other thing that I think helps a lot, or at least this helps me in regard to the state of the world, is if I read something that makes me feel despair, I then look for someone doing good.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
I think you're totally right. And, you know, as someone who works in the news, I've had several conversations, um, with the networks that I've been at about how we need to tell more stories of hope.
- MRMel Robbins
Yes.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
We need to put that out there because people need to see it.
- MRMel Robbins
Is there a daily habit that you can practice to help you cultivate this hopefulness as a skill set and a mindset?
- TNDr. Tara Narula
[laughs]
- MRMel Robbins
'Cause I refuse to succumb to the despair. I re- And that's not being naive. It's, I just choose to believe there's always something you can do.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
So my husband gave me, um, the book The Secret and The Magic.
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah, yeah.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Yeah, 'cause he knows I believe in manifesting and dreams and all of that sort of stuff.
- MRMel Robbins
Of course. Proven by nervos- neuroscience.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Exactly.
- MRMel Robbins
I mean, it's not even believing in it.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
[laughs]
- MRMel Robbins
It's proven, yeah.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
So one of the exercises says, you know, in the morning when you wake up or before you go to bed at night, you think about six things, you know, that you're grateful for. And at first when I started doing it, I thought, "Oh, my God, six, that sounds like a lot." [laughs]
- MRMel Robbins
[laughs]
- TNDr. Tara Narula
I gotta find six things. Um, but then you start to think about it, and they're small things. They're, you know, "My daughter told me about something that really great happened, that happened really great in her day today. You know, um, my patient, I helped them, you know, with this. I was able to get up and exercise on the treadmill today and walk 'cause I'm able to use my legs."
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah.
- TNDr. Tara Narula
You know, "I, uh, the subway came on time today, and I didn't have to wait 10 minutes." [laughs] And suddenly, as you're doing, you start to realize there's actually a lot of things that really went well that I'm grateful for, and your mindset shifts.
- MRMel Robbins
Well, the way you described it, Dr. Narula, y- you're intentionally directing and programming your mind-
- TNDr. Tara Narula
Yes
Episode duration: 1:01:15
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