Andrew Bernstein - The Myth of Stress: Where Stress Really Comes From and How to Live a Happier and Healthier Life

Masterful Ive never read a more useful book about managing stress.

ADAM GRANT

7 Steps to Greater Resilience, Happiness, and Peace of Mind

Breaking the Stress Cycle

Andrew Bernstein

Previously Published as The Myth of Stress

We often think we have to avoid or reduce stress. [Breaking the Stress Cycle] teaches you not to manage stress but to root out the very causes of stress, the tangled thinking that keeps you stuck in the belief the world has to change for you to be happy. Andrew Bernstein guides us through a way to untangle those thoughts and be free. Read this book and it will change your life and you will find your happiness will depend on only one thingYOU.

Mark Hyman, M.D., New York Times bestselling author of The UltraMind Solution

I love Andy Bernstein and his commitment to helping people challenge their thinking.

Byron Katie, author of Loving What Is

Bernsteins volume is an outstanding guide to understanding the nature of stress and how to handle it. The book provides numerous insights and techniques for anyone experiencing stressand who doesnt?

Aaron T. Beck, M.D., founder of Cognitive Therapy

[Breaking the Stress Cycle] is a compelling, compassionate book about our suffering when we fight reality and the transformation that is possible when we dont. I loved it.

Geneen Roth, author of When Food Is Love and Women Food and God

Andrew Bernstein has brought some much-needed common sense to the subject of stress and that alone makes this book a winner.

Caroline Myss, author of Defy Gravity and Invisible Acts of Power

Bernstein has created a wonderful, accessible how-to manual for regular people wanting to feel better.

Kathleen DesMaisons, Ph.D., author of Potatoes Not Prozac

An easy-to-learn method for addressing issues underlying stress.

Library Journal

Look out, Anthony Robbins; move over, Deepak Chopra; theres a quiet storm moving up through this state and beyond. His name is Andrew Bernstein. Hes an intelligent, calm, and soft-spoken person who uses reason and logic to quiet the mind.

Vision Magazine

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Copyright 2010 by Andrew J. Bernstein

Previously published as The Myth of Stress

Preface copyright 2021 by Andrew J. Bernstein

ACTIVE INSIGHT and RESILIENCE ACADEMY are registered trademarks of The Resilience Academy

Names and identifying characteristics have been changed and some individuals are composites.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Atria Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Atria Paperback edition June 2021

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Cover design by Chelsea M C Guckin

Author photograph Laura Rose

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Free Press hardcover as follows:

Bernstein, Andrew (Andrew J.)

The myth of stress: where stress really comes from, and how to live a happier and healthier life / Andrew Bernstein.

p.cm.

1. Stress (Psychology). 2. Self-realization. 3. Success. 4. Success in business. I. Title.

BF575.S75B427 2010

155.9'042dc222009049962

ISBN 978-1-4391-5946-0 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-4391-7176-9 (ebook)

I t has been ten years since this book was first published. The French have a saying that translates as The more things change, the more they stay the same, but it seems like nothing is staying the same, so let me begin this new introduction by recognizing a few of the changes over the past ten years, both in this book and in the world.

One change is the title for this book. The original edition was called The Myth of Stress, which confusingly implied that I consider stress a myth. (It isnt.) The new title, Breaking the Stress Cycle, points more directly to this books promise: if stress and anxiety have made your life an emotional roller coaster and you wish you could stop the ride and find solid ground again, Breaking the Stress Cycle can help. It can permanently alter both how you understand stress and how you deal with it.

The second change, significant only to me perhaps, is that I got married and became a father. Some people used to tell me that my seven-step technique to dismantle stress would fly out the window once I experienced the realities of parenting. In fact, fatherhood has just given me many more chances to apply it. To quote an old commercial, Im not only the Hair Club president. Im also a client. If youve struggled with frustration as a parent, this book will add a useful new tool to your parenting toolkit.

A third change is that with ten additional years of teaching and speaking engagements under my belt, Ive been able to test my unique approach to stress with several thousand more people. Im happy to report that its still both effective and surprising for the people who have used iteffective because it can change how you feel in a matter of minutes, and surprising because most people are still unaware that they are confused about the nature of stress.

Today this ignorance is especially expensive, because the fourthand largestchange since this books original release is the almost cataclysmic level of disruption taking place in the world. Ten years ago, if you had mediocre stress-coping skills, you could still get by. But today, as our world stumbles from one heartbreaking catastrophe to the nextglobal health crises, political polarization, economic uncertainty, discrimination, climate changea suboptimal toolkit for dealing with stress takes a real toll.

That toll shows up as more frequent arguments with our partners, less patience with our parents and kids, greater frustration with colleagues, or simply across-the-board despair. We see evidence of this not just anecdotally in our own lives, but also empirically in the worlds longest study of human well-being, the Harvard Grant Study.

The Grant Study has spent more than eighty years and twenty million dollars seeking to learn what matters most for happiness over the span of our adult lives, through good times and bad. And the answer is not money, achievements, health, family, or faith. After all, you know people who have all these things and are still not especially happy. So what is the most important thing for achieving happiness based on data?

The answers most commonly cited in TED talks and media headlines are