When your brain says “work!” but your body says, “nope.”
Practical strategies for entrepreneurs with chronic illness to align body and brain, from pain reprocessing to sleep and pacing.
Hi,
My wife and I are both chronically ill (and she helped me build the resources for this chapter, which was a huge help). I talk about my thoughts and challenges in this chapter, so I’m not going to go into it here, but it’s…suboptimal, to say the least.
For years we lived in the margins, scraping through deadlines, burning out, then doing it all over again because there was no space to stop. We were surviving, not thriving. And for a long time, that felt like the only option.
But then things started to shift. Not because we got better overnight, or found a miracle cure. We just started experimenting. Testing small, practical changes. Building in micro-moments of safety. Over time, those experiments gave us back pockets of energy. Focus. Joy. Now, we can even travel for two weeks to Europe and not feel like death afterward.
It turned out that the same strategies we were using to reclaim our lives were the same ones that helped our bodies “recover”, which I put in quotes because we’re still very much chronically ill.
Why is this relevant to entrepreneurs, despite the fact that statistically many of you reading this either are or will be chronically ill in your life? Because your body is actively working against you.
This isn’t metaphorical, it’s biological. Your body cannot tell the difference between physical danger and mental danger. When you try to push past your comfort zone, your body interprets that just like it would interpret being chased by a lion.
When you’re going into mentally dangerous territory, like a place outside your comfort zone, your body wants you to stop. It wants you to stay in the safe space because if you stay in the safe space you know, you won’t die. We haven’t evolved past this primitive response, even though the “dangers” we face are more about ego than survival.
What makes it harder is that everyone around you also wants to stay in their safe space. They have all evolutionarily been brought up to be in that place too. So you have to break through a lot to do this work.
Every time you sit down to make something new, you’re going against millions of years of evolutionary programming telling you to stick with what’s safe. Your body wants you to stay in your comfort zone because historically, that’s what kept our species alive.
The best founders have broken through hundreds of these internal blocks to be able to speak authentically and vulnerably. Each time they pushed past their comfort zone, they expanded what their body considered “safe territory.”
This is why positive self-talk is so crucial. Your body is already telling you negative stories about danger and safety. You need to actively counter those stories. You need to remind yourself that stretching beyond your comfort zone is how you grow, that the discomfort you’re feeling is the sensation of progress.
Understanding this biological resistance has transformed how I think about productivity. It’s not just about time management or productivity techniques or business strategies. It’s about learning to work with, or despite, your body’s primitive survival instincts.
The resistance you feel is natural, but it’s also outdated. Your body thinks it’s protecting you, but it’s actually holding you back from the very things that will help you grow and thrive in the modern world. Understanding this is the first step to building a sustainable career.
Just doing the mental work isn’t enough. We could be the most intellectually advanced human in the world, and our body’s evolutionary wiring will still betray us.
If you’re going to create consistently, sustainably, and with any shot at joy, you need to make peace with your body. Below are a collection of practical strategies for doing just that.
Before we get started, I am NOT a doctor, this is NOT medical advice, and I am not ignoring your method because I hate you. This is simply what has, or is, working for us, and my thoughts on it.
We won’t be held liable for what happens if you take any of this advice, and nothing here is a substitute for consulting with a doctor.
Your nervous system is not broken. It’s just doing its job
Most animals don’t stay panicked. They encounter a threat, activate their stress response, flee, and then, almost immediately, they reset. You’ve seen it happen. A deer bolts after hearing a snap, then goes right back to grazing once the coast is clear. They shake it off. Literally. That’s not just poetic, it’s biological.
Humans? We don’t do that. We see the threat. We run. But when it’s over? We keep panicking. We keep rehearsing it in our heads, replaying the worst-case scenario, stewing in adrenaline long after the danger’s passed. We carry the email from our boss, the look from a stranger, or the memory of a past failure like it’s still happening.
That lingering state of panic is where chronic stress lives. It’s where chronic illness breeds. And it’s why so many of us, especially creatives, feel like we’re trying to produce magic from inside a burning building.
So, if you’re stuck in that place, you’re not weak. You’re human. But if you want to create again, and not just create, but create from a place that doesn’t torch you in the process, you need to learn how to reset like the deer.
Most of us are living in a constant state of threat. Not because we’re being chased by tigers, but because our bodies can’t tell the difference between a real emergency and an overflowing inbox, a fight with a partner, or scrolling past someone else’s six-figure launch.
That “danger” gets registered in your autonomic nervous system, which is the part of your body that runs things behind the scenes. It has two main gears: sympathetic (fight, flight, freeze, fawn) and parasympathetic (rest and repair). In a healthy system, you should be able to switch between the two easily. Gear up when needed, then downshift when the threat is over.
If you’ve ever made your best work while under extreme pressure, pulled off miracles on deadline, or somehow come alive when everything’s falling apart, that might not be creative brilliance, it might be a dysregulated nervous system. You might be running on survival-mode chemistry. Adrenaline. Cortisol. Emergency drive.
That kind of wiring can push out short bursts of brilliance, sure, but it leaves wreckage. It’s not sustainable, and when the crash comes, it hits hard.
For most people, especially those of us with chronic illness, trauma history, or burnout, our nervous system is jammed. We’re stuck in sympathetic overdrive, even when we’re trying to rest. Or we flip into a parasympathetic freeze: exhausted, numb, and shut down.
So when you sit down to do something, and your chest tightens or your brain fog rolls in, it’s not because you’re broken. It’s because your nervous system doesn’t believe that it’s safe. After all, you’re asking it to do something unsafe, namely to be visible, take risks, and/or create without a net, among others. Of course it slams the brakes.
That’s why all the strategies below work so well. Not because they’re productivity hacks, but because they rebuild that trust. They show your body, slowly and patiently, that it’s okay to create again.
If you want to read more on this, we recommend The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory: The Transformative Power of Feeling Safe by Stephen W Porges
Pain reprocessing therapy
Pain is just the start. And for a lot of us, it’s not even the main issue. Fatigue, dizziness, brain fog, numbness, tightness, shortness of breath, and more, can all be part of the same loop.
Your brain learns where pain is to save us from hurting ourselves worse. What wires together fires together, they say, and if things wire together long enough, they create deep grooves, even when the roots of the pain are gone.
This goes beyond just pain. It includes fatigue, dizziness, brain fog, numbness, tingling, tightness, shortness of breath, basically all the weird symptoms that make you feel like you’re losing your mind. It doesn’t mean those sensations are fake. It means your danger system is stuck on high alert. Even if there’s no physical threat, your body keeps reacting like there is.
Pain reprocessing, sometimes called Brain Retraining, is about interrupting that loop. It’s about gently teaching your brain that your body is safe. Not with affirmations or positive thinking, but by noticing the sensations without freaking out. By staying with them long enough for your system to go, “Oh. Okay. We’re not about to die.”
You start small. Just a few minutes at a time. Sit with the ache or the wave of exhaustion and talk to it like a scared kid: “You’re okay. This is safe. You’re allowed to rest.” Over time, the symptoms that used to knock me flat began to soften. Not disappear overnight. But lose their grip.
It’s not a miracle. It’s a retraining process. It’s unlearning fear. And it’s real. The symptoms aren’t gone, but they’re not steering the ship anymore.
Where to start: Curable app and The Way Out: A Revolutionary, Scientifically Proven Approach to Healing Chronic Pain by Alan Gordon,
Pacing
Pacing, in the chronic illness world, is about respecting your body’s current capacity. For people with energy-limiting conditions like ME/CFS, pacing is a way to avoid triggering post-exertional malaise (PEM), where even a small push can lead to a total system crash.
This isn’t about working smarter or taking breaks when you remember. It’s about organizing your day around your body’s energy envelope, what it can realistically handle right now, not what you wish it could. It means letting the body set the boundaries, and actually honoring them.
When we first started pacing, we thought we were being careful. But we were still doing too much. We’d take advantage of “good days,” push harder than we should, and pay for it for days after. Real pacing meant watching our heart rates, resting before symptoms started, and making peace with the fact that joy, work, and even fun had to be measured.
Now we build our days with recovery in mind. We don’t wait to feel tired. We ask, right from the start: where’s the margin? What will we drop if things go sideways? What does “just enough” look like today?
It’s not about giving up. It’s about staying steady. Not sprinting, not collapsing—just showing up again tomorrow with enough in the tank to try.
Where to start: Visible app. I also recommend a Garmin Vivoactive 5 with the Pacing watchface.
Individualized nutrition
You can’t fuel a spaceship with pond water. And you can’t fuel a body with whatever’s quick, easy, or marketed as “energy boosting.” Nutrition is personal. What works for one person might absolutely wreck someone else.
We found that out the hard way. I can eat fruit all day and feel great. My wife? It spikes her blood sugar, tanks her energy, and sets her back hours. That is, unless she eats nuts beforehand. Then, she can curb that blood sugar spike.
That’s not about willpower or preference, it’s biology. Our bodies just respond differently.
My wife only found this out after wearing a blood glucose monitor for two weeks and getting a personalized nutrition plan that told her exactly what to eat, what not to eat, and how to sequence her eating.
I then learned about it from her, but admittedly didn’t do the glucose monitor.
This isn’t a diet. It’s an experiment. Be curious. Test small things. Try shifting one piece at a time and notice what happens. There’s no right plan, no universal fix, just the one your body responds to.
Once you start seeing the patterns, it gets easier to support the body that actually wants to create, instead of accidentally sabotaging it with every bite.
It doesn’t matter what works for your brother, your mother, or your kid. Everybody’s body is different.
Where to start: Zoe. They also have a podcast my wife swears by.
Gut health
One of the most overlooked but powerful factors in energy, mood, and overall regulation is your gut. Your gut isn’t just a digestion machine, it’s a major command center for your immune system, inflammation, and even your neurotransmitters. And when it’s out of whack, everything feels harder.
We didn’t know how much gut health mattered until we started seeing connections. Certain foods didn’t just give us stomach issues, they wrecked our focus. Sleep got worse. Our capacity for stress shrank. We’d get weird mood dips or feel unreasonably irritable, and it all traced back to the gut.
To help this, experts recommend fiber rich and fermented foods, along with whole plants.
The bacteria living in your digestive system, your gut microbiome, can either help regulate your system or keep it on high alert. And the tricky part? You don’t always feel it in your stomach. You feel it in your brain, your joints, your fatigue levels, and even your stamina.
The goal isn’t to be perfect. It’s to reduce chaos. Pay attention to what foods feel good not just in the moment, but in the hours that follow. Fiber, fermented foods, diversity in your meals, they all seem to help. But ultimately, it’s about tuning into what helps your gut help you.
Where to start: Zoe, again, and their podcast, again.
Breathwork
Breathing seems like the most basic thing. You do it all the time, right? But for most of us, especially those of us dealing with chronic stress or illness, our default breath is short, shallow, and stuck in the chest. It keeps the nervous system wired, the stress hormones high, and the body primed for threat.
Deliberate breathing is a shortcut to calming your system. It’s not woo-woo. It’s science. Slow, deep breathing activates the vagus nerve, which signals your body that you’re safe. That you can stop running. That it’s okay to rest.
The ideal is what’s called “resonant breathing”, about 5.5 breaths per minute, in and out through the nose. It’s not about counting, performing, or doing it “right.”
It’s about slowing down just enough to interrupt the panic spiral and let your body exhale fully. Just a minute or two at a time, enough to say to the body: you’re okay now. You can put the weapons down.
The body doesn’t respond to thoughts. It responds to cues. And breath is one of the clearest, most powerful cues we’ve got.
Where to start: Elite HRV app, specifically the section Biofeedback (breathing exercises), and specifically 10-week breathing program. Also the book Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor and The Breathing Cure: Develop New Habits for a Healthier, Happier, and Longer Life by Patrick McKeown.
Meditation
I used to think meditation meant sitting still with an empty mind for twenty minutes and transcending reality. Spoiler: that never happened. What did happen was racing thoughts, muscle twitches, and a growing sense of failure.
I told my wife meditation wasn’t for me a bunch of times, but then I heard a podcast talking about how meditation is about focusing on your breath, and I realized that I often laid in bed in the morning for over an hour doing 4-7-8 breathing, the ideal meditation cadence for me, and realized I ruled at meditation.
More importantly, I had been feeling a lot better since doing it.
Even a few consistent minutes a day made a difference. Not always dramatically, but enough to create a crack in the panic. Enough to slip one calm breath into the middle of the chaos.
Meditation doesn’t need a cushion or a mantra. Just a willingness to sit, even briefly, with whatever is happening, and let that be enough.
Where to begin: Calm app.
The McGill Big Three stretches
There’s a lot of pressure to have a perfect movement practice, but when you’re chronically ill or dealing with persistent pain, even gentle movement can feel like a minefield. That’s why I do the McGill Big 3 every morning.
I spent decades not stretching before I pulled my back multiple times. I wasn’t about to do an hour of stretches, which is what most doctors said, but then I met with a chiropractor who gave me just three stretches called the McGill Big Three.
Originally designed for spinal rehab and core stability, the McGill Big 3 are simple, controlled movements that stabilize the spine and strengthen the core without flaring symptoms. They’re not flashy. They’re not really much of a workout. But they help reconnect with my body on days when almost nothing else feels accessible, and they’ve helped me increase the range by which I operate.
Here’s what they include:
Modified curl-up – Keeps the low back supported while strengthening the abdominal wall.
Bird-dog – Builds cross-body coordination and supports the back without strain.
Side plank – Activates the obliques and deep core stabilizers that keep everything aligned.
I do them slowly, with breath. Always with the intention of building trust, not strength. Just enough to remind our bodies that movement is possible. From there I started adding in vinyasas, upward dog, downward dog, wall stretches, and my “three little stretches” had now become a whole 20+ minute routine every morning.
But it didn’t start there. It started with just three.
Where to begin: The McGill Big 3.
Sleep
Sleep is not a reward. It’s not something you get once you’ve earned it by clearing your inbox or hitting your word count. It’s a biological requirement, and for those of us with chronic illness, it’s often the single biggest lever we have to pull.
But it’s also elusive. Chronic pain, nervous system dysregulation, hormone swings, anxiety, it all messes with sleep. And poor sleep makes all of those things worse. It’s a vicious cycle.
We’ve tried everything: sleep hygiene, blackout curtains, supplements, tracking apps, no screens before bed. Some of it helped, some didn’t. What did make a difference was treating sleep like a hard boundary. We stopped pushing through late-night work. We gave ourselves wind-down rituals. We prioritized low-stimulation evenings over “catching up.”
Good sleep doesn’t always happen. But better sleep? That’s usually available. And even if the night is bad, a gentle morning helps: dim lights, soft movement, warm food. No shock to the system. Just easing in.
Sleep might not feel productive. But for your body, it’s where all the real repair happens. Honor it like the cornerstone it is.
Where to start: The Sleep Reset program and Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker PhD.
Boundaries
We talk about pacing our work and honoring our bodies, but none of that sticks without boundaries. Not just with other people, but with ourselves.
Boundaries aren’t walls. They’re agreements. With your time. With your energy. With your nervous system. They say: this is how I protect what matters, including my capacity to create.
For a long time, we said yes to everything, because we were afraid they’d stop coming. But every yes drained the well. Until one day there was nothing left to give. That’s not discipline. That’s collapse.
Now we ask: Does this actually support my work? My body? My recovery? If the answer isn’t a clear yes, it’s a no. Or a “not right now”. Or a “not like this”.
The hardest boundaries are often internal. The ones that say I won’t let myself spiral after 9pm. I won’t check my email before breakfast. I won’t guilt myself into a task I know will knock me out for two days.
You can’t create from depletion. You can’t heal in chaos. Boundaries are what let you do both. Not all at once. But enough to keep going.
Where to start: Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself by Nedra Glover Tawwab
Habits
When your body’s exhausted and your brain is glitching, the last thing you want is another list of things you “should” be doing. But the truth is, we already have habits. We already have default settings. The question is whether those defaults are helping us heal or keeping us stuck.
We used to wake up and scroll. Or skip breakfast. Or doom-think about all the things we hadn’t done yet. Not because we chose to, but because those were the grooves we’d worn into our days. Our bodies followed the path of least resistance, and that path led straight to burnout.
Changing that didn’t mean overhauling everything. It meant inserting tiny switches. One new anchor at a time. Five minutes of stretching before opening the laptop. A glass of water before coffee. A check-in with our energy level before deciding what work to attempt.
We didn’t need habits that made us “better.” We needed habits that made us safer. More grounded. Less likely to tip into the shame spiral when things didn’t go as planned.
Habit change isn’t about discipline. It’s about design. It’s about making the helpful thing easier to reach than the harmful one. And when your body learns to trust that your patterns won’t sabotage it? Everything else gets easier.
Where to start: Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything by BJ Fogg, Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear, and The Power of Habits: Building a Life You Love by Daniel King.
Medication and supplements
None of this would have been possible for me without support, specifically, pharmaceutical support. I’m not ashamed of that. SSRIs for depression and beta blockers for anxiety helped create enough baseline stability that I could even begin to notice what was going on in my body, let alone start healing.
These weren’t magic fixes. But they were scaffolding. They turned the volume down on the emergency signals just enough to try things, like breathwork without immediately crashing.
Then, one day the voices in my head telling me to kill myself stopped and I turned to my wife and said “Wait, that voice isn’t normal?”
Remember, that voice is NOT NORMAL! I feel like a superhero now after spending almost 40 years working through that nagging voice telling me to stop and die.
And on top of that, we found certain supplements that helped regulate our systems. Not as a replacement for meds, but as a complement. Things like magnesium, omega-3s, B, C, D, electrolytes, etc. We tried them slowly, one at a time, and tracked what actually made a difference.
This is not medical advice. I’m not a doctor. But I am someone who’s tried a hundred things just to get my feet back under me, and meds were a crucial part of that picture. If your nervous system is screaming 24/7, sometimes the most compassionate thing you can do is quiet it chemically, so you can start hearing what else it might be saying.
Where to start: Your doctor, or a trusted friend, or at least a nutritionist.
Talk therapy
Some of the most powerful healing I’ve experienced didn’t come from fixing my thoughts. It came from being heard. Really heard. Not by friends trying to cheer me up, or family trying to fix me, but by someone trained to sit with the mess.
Talk therapy gave me language. It gave me perspective. It gave me a place to say the hard stuff out loud without needing to justify it. Sometimes it helped me unpack trauma. Sometimes it just helped me name what I was feeling so I could stop storing it in my body.
Not all therapy is created equal. It took a few tries to find someone who got it, who didn’t pathologize chronic illness or minimize nervous system dysregulation. But when I did, it gave me a kind of support that nothing else could touch.
Therapy doesn’t fix everything. But it loosens the knots. It gives you a place to offload what your body has been carrying.
Where to start: Your doctor.
Choosing joy over happiness
For a long time, I thought the goal was happiness. The big, fireworks kind. The launch that went viral. The project that finally felt “done.” But what I’ve come to realize, especially while living with chronic illness, is that happiness is unreliable. It’s a high, and chasing highs keeps your nervous system on the hook.
What’s actually sustainable? Joy. Contentment. The quiet kind. The joy of a good cup of tea. The satisfaction of a paragraph that sings. The small victories that don’t announce themselves with trumpets, but build something steady underneath you.
Chasing joy doesn’t mean toxic positivity. It doesn’t mean pretending things are okay when they’re not. It means noticing what is okay. Letting that be enough for today.
For us, that shift changed everything. We stopped trying to feel amazing all the time. We started seeking out what felt gentle, what felt true. And our bodies responded. Not with instant healing, but with a little more trust. A little more space.
This work is hard, but joy makes it easier. Contentment makes it possible. And they’re both more available than happiness ever was.
Where to start: The Happiness Lab podcast, along with Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness by Ingrid Fetell Lee, The Happiness Trap (Second Edition): How to Stop Struggling and Start Living by Russ Harris, and The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness by Robert Waldinger.
Gratitude
Gratitude gets a bad rap because it’s constantly shoved in your face. When you’re chronically ill or burned out, the last thing you want is someone chirping, “Just be grateful!” while your body is on fire. That kind of gratitude is performative. It’s a bypass. It denies what’s hard.
But there’s another kind that actually helps.
This kind of gratitude doesn’t override your pain. It sits next to it. It says: “Yes, this is hard. And also… this tea is warm. The sun hit my face for a minute. That sentence I wrote wasn’t terrible.” Micro-gratitudes. Grounding truths.
It’s not about being grateful instead of struggling. It’s about noticing what’s good while you struggle. And when you do that consistently, something shifts.
Studies show that gratitude reduces cortisol, eases inflammation, and nudges your nervous system out of fight-or-flight. It calms the amygdala. Helps your heart rate settle. Makes you feel physically less threatened. Not magically. Not instantly. But enough to matter.
And no, you don’t have to feel grateful all the time. You don’t have to fake it, but if you can find one real , small thing that doesn’t suck? That’s a crack in the armor. That’s your body starting to believe it’s safe.
Where to start: Gratitude app.
Touch therapy
The first thing I did with any regularity aside from supplements and medicine was chiropractic. It took seriously blowing out my back before I decided to give it a go, and now I’ve been going for years.
My wife, my mom, and my sister had all been doing it for a long time before I got over myself and made an appointment. They swore it helped. I shrugged it off. Too “woo” for me. Not enough evidence, I thought. Not serious enough. I figured if I ignored the pain long enough, it would just go away.
It didn’t. So, I went. And it worked.
Don’t get me wrong. There are lots of scammers in this space, but there are plenty of good people, too. You just have to look for them.
Getting chiropractic care cracked something open, literally and figuratively. I started questioning the story I’d been telling myself about what “counts” as care. Once you pick at a corner, it’s hard to stop picking.
Massage came next. Luckily, my chiropractor has two massage people who work inside her practice. At first, it felt like a treat, but my masseuse said something that stuck with me: “After 40, massages aren’t for luxury. They’re for maintenance.”
That changed my mindset. I am getting older, and my meat suit is not working as it once did. Maintenance. Not indulgence. Just what it takes to function in a body that’s been carrying too much for too long.
I haven’t done acupuncture, or anything else in this space since I really don’t love to be touched, aside from physical therapy (which I also recommend), but I can tell you that it’s very hard to do work at a high level when your spine and muscles are messed up.
Don’t be stubborn like me. Find a good practitioner in your area, one at least one person you trust swears by, and give it a try.
Where to start: Asking people for a referral.
Interdependency
None of this is about finding the one thing that fixes everything. It’s about building trust between your brain and your body. That trust won’t come from muscling through or pretending you’re fine. It comes from showing up, again and again, with honesty, curiosity, and care.
Sometimes the most radical thing you can do for your creative work isn’t to push harder, but to pause, ask your body what it needs, and listen.
You are not weak for needing rest. You’re not lazy for needing systems. You’re not broken for having limits. You’re an entrepreneur with a body. The better you treat that body, the more it will trust you to do the work you came here to do.
Books to read
These books go beyond what we talked about above. I couldn’t add them to any specific section because they are more holistic, or they are a necessary datapoint more than a practice.
Women’s Bodies & Hormones
I know that there are men who read this, but I still think everyone should read these. Even if you learn nothing about yourself (which you will), everyone will have at least one person they love affected by what they talk about in these books.
The New Menopause: Navigating Your Path Through Hormonal Change with Purpose, Power, and Facts by Mary Claire Haver, M.D. - A science-backed, compassionate guide to navigating hormonal changes with purpose and clarity. Haver combines her OB-GYN expertise with anecdotal relatability, offering practical toolkits around symptoms, lifestyle adjustments, and medical options, including hormone replacement, while debunking myths and stigma.
Unwell Women: Misdiagnosis and Myth in a Man-Made World by Elinor Cleghorn - A sweeping cultural history exposing how misogyny has shaped the misdiagnosis and mistreatment of women from ancient womb theories to modern autoimmunity. Cleghorn blends personal narrative (her lupus journey) with academic research to show how women’s voices have been sidelined in medicine.
The Lady’s Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness: A Memoir by Sarah Ramey - A memoir told with sharp detail, weaving investigation and advocacy as Ramey recounts her multiyear struggle with undiagnosed chronic illness. It’s a compelling insider view of what it’s like to chase healing when no one seems to understand what’s wrong.
Trauma, Mind & Body
If you’re going to go deep on body healing, then the first two books in this category are essential. I didn’t put them first because they are very heavy books, and taken together are a bit bleak. That said, they are also the basis by which all the rest of it revolves around.
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D. - Landmark work exploring how trauma imprints on both brain and body. Covers neurobiology, narratives, and somatic healing, ideal for people dealing with latent trauma or embedded stress. This is a very heavy book.
When the Body Says No by Gabor Maté, M.D. - Maté connects chronic illness to emotional suppression and long-term stress. He argues that ignoring emotional needs often results in physical breakdown. Do not read this book without reading The Body Keeps the Score, and probably the other three books above, first.
Why You Eat What You Eat: The Science Behind Our Relationship with Food by Rachel Herz, PhD - An exploration of the psychology, neuroscience, and sensory cues behind our food choices, showing how smell, memory, and context shape what, and why, we eat.
The Personalized Diet: The Pioneering Program to Lose Weight and Prevent Disease by Eran Elinav - Based on large-scale clinical research, this book reveals how individual blood sugar responses, driven in part by gut microbes, make one-size-fits-all diets ineffective, and provides a framework for customizing eating plans to optimize health.
What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma by Stephanie Foo - A memoir about trauma that dives deep on how it feels inside your body when you have complex PTSD, and how hard it is to recover from it. The other books on this list might seem like it’s quick and/or easy, but this will show the process on a granular level.
It Didn’t Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle by Mark Wolynn - Generational trauma has less scientific backing them a lot of the other books on this list, but I think it’s informative to read this book to see how longitudinal trauma can be, and how to work through it.
Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One by Dr. Joe Dispenza - If you want to learn the science of manifesting, and how it connects to research, quantum physics, and general practice, this is a very deep guide, but it is also very far from what you know. So, it might sound batty.
Work, Productivity & Burnout
We’re all either in burnout, recovering from burnout, or on the way to burnout, and these books can help you find a path forward for yourself that is sustainable and manageable.
Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout by Cal Newport - Recasts productivity away from hustle culture, advocating for measured, meaningful work. A grounded guide for creatives who want consistency over frenzy.
Feel-Good Productivity: How to Do More of What Matters to You by Ali Abdaal - A practical, human-centered “productivity with heart” playbook less about spreadsheets, more about what matters most.
Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life by Francesc Miralles - This book blends a lot of mindset, meditation, and burnout prevention while also helping you narrow and focus on your bliss.
Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Amelia Nagoski, DMA
Examines the stress cycle and how to close it, offering empathetic, research-backed ways to move past burnout, especially important for chronically exhausted creatives.The Cure for Burnout: How to Find Balance and Reclaim Your Life by Emily Ballesteros - A holistic burnout recovery plan centered on five pillars, mindset, personal care, time management, boundaries, and stress regulation, to help rebuild balance and resilience.
Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know by Adam Grant - Adam Grant’s Think Again explores why rethinking our beliefs, and staying open to changing them, is essential for growth, learning, and leadership. Here’s a breakdown of the core ideas and how they can transform how you think, decide, and relate to others.
From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life by Arthur C. Brooks - When we are young, we have a lot of fluid intelligence that lets us move from thing to thing and adapt quickly. As we age that is replaced by crystallized intelligence, which is better for making connections between things. However, almost everyone and everything is taught around fluid intelligence.
Mindset and Meaning
If I could recommend only one book on this whole syllabus, it would be The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control. All of my clients are perfectionists, and it’s the first time I’ve ever heard somebody say that perfectionism isn’t bad. They are all great. We gifted Chatter to my mother after my wife and I both finished reading it.
Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It by Ethan Kross - Explores the voice in your head, why it matters. and techniques to channel it. Great for helping quiet the inner critic.
The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control: A Path to Peace and Power by Katherine Morgan Schafler - Breaks down how perfectionism shows up, especially for creative types, and how to shift toward peace and productivity. This did more for me than almost anything else on this list because it talks about how perfectionism isn’t bad, the fact that we use punishment to encourage it is the problem.
How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question by Michael Schur - A humorous moral philosophy dive from one of TV’s best creators, irreverent, insightful, and useful for living with internal “should’s.”
Life in Three Dimensions: How Curiosity, Exploration, and Experience Make a Fuller, Better Life by Shigehiro Oishi, PhD - Argues for dimensional living, curiosity, exploration, novelty, as a route to deeper satisfaction, especially for those worn down by routine.
How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell -A protest against the attention economy, encouraging intentional rest, awareness, and creative presence.
The Gifts of Imperfection: 10th Anniversary Edition: Features a new foreword and brand-new tools by Brené Brown - A warm, research-backed guide teaching you how to embrace vulnerability, release perfectionism, and cultivate wholehearted living through courage, compassion, and authenticity
Stress Resets: How to Soothe Your Body and Mind in Minutes by Jennifer L Taitz PsyD Abpp - Packed with quick, research-backed techniques, from ice-face dips to mindful pauses, for calming the body and mind in minutes
The Microstress Effect: How Little Things Pile Up and Create Big Problems--And What to Do about It by Karen Dillon - A look at how tiny daily irritations, emails left unanswered, curt comments, minor disruptions, accumulate over time to erode mental and emotional well-being. Backed by solid research, it shows how addressing micro-stress across relationships and rebuilding multidimensional lives can restore energy and focus
The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Trauma and Adversity by Nadine Burke Harris - A study into how adverse childhood experiences rewire our biology, impacting immunity, stress systems, and lifelong health, and outlines practical interventions to heal toxic stress before it becomes chronic disease
Creative Career, Community, & Communication
These books are less about your body specifically and more about your relationship to others and the outside world. Finding ways to interact better and not getting twisted about it is essential for a calm existence.
Surrounded by Idiots: The Four Types of Human Behavior and How to Effectively Communicate with Each in Business (and in Life) by Thomas Erikson - A guide to decoding four behavioral types, tools for smoother communication, better work relationships, and smarter marketing.
Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict Into Connection by John Gottman PhD - Though relationship-focused, Gottman’s conflict strategies foster kinder communication, even with editors, promoters, or yourself.
Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come: One Introvert’s Year of Saying Yes by Jessica Pan - A witty, honest memoir in which an extreme introvert embarks on a year of deliberately “saying yes”—from solo travel to stand-up comedy—to explore what happens when social boundaries are pushed and self-imposed limits are dismantled
Perspective & Presence
These books deal with everything from manifestation to mindset, and I just really think they build a basis for how to go through your day and think about the world in peace.
The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff - A whimsical introduction to Taoist simplicity and flow, told through the characters of Winnie-the-Pooh.
The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer - This short book is all about how to create sustainable systems in economic that honor reciprocity between humans and nature, deeply restorative for those weary of burnout.
Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman - A realist’s guide to time, encouraging acceptance of limits and a focus on what truly matters.
Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts by Oliver Burkeman - A four-week practice in embracing limitations and cultivating mental space, a perfect companion to the heavier mindset books.
Mind Magic: The Neuroscience of Manifestation and How It Changes Everything by James R. Doty MD - Blends neuroscience and manifestation; explores how intention and belief can shape our bodily systems.
Stop Missing Your Life: How to Be Deeply Present in an Un-Present World by Cory Muscara - lays out the foundation of meditation, focus, and being allowing bad experiences not to shake you. I love the presence haiku idea he shares in it.
Good resources!! Bookmarking for later! Practical ways to hack relaxation and feeling safe are so useful and valid.