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De logica van stress: een slimme aanpak voor een stressvrij leven
Ieder van ons ervaart de toename van stress in de samenleving, maar we zoeken nog steeds naar effectieve manieren om die te verlichten en te voorkomen.
Net als in zijn wereldwijde bestseller De logica van geluk benadert technicus Mo Gawdat het probleem van stress met een analytische houding: hoe is de overbelasting van ons systeem ontstaan en hoe kunnen we die verhelpen? Dat doet hij door de oorzaken en gevolgen van stress in kaart te brengen, waarbij hij onderscheid maakt tussen geestelijke, emotionele, fysieke en spirituele stress. Gawdat en zijn medeauteur Alice Law laten in dit boek wetenschappelijk onderbouwd zien hoe voorspelbaar stress is, en dat het daardoor dus goed valt te beheersen. Zij baseren hun kennis mede op hun eigen pijnlijke ervaringen met destructieve stress. Juist omdat zij ook die kwetsbare verhalen met de lezer delen, zijn hun aanbevelingen voor een stressvrij leven oprecht, positief en waardevol.
Net als in zijn wereldwijde bestseller De logica van geluk benadert technicus Mo Gawdat het probleem van stress met een analytische houding: hoe is de overbelasting van ons systeem ontstaan en hoe kunnen we die verhelpen? Dat doet hij door de oorzaken en gevolgen van stress in kaart te brengen, waarbij hij onderscheid maakt tussen geestelijke, emotionele, fysieke en spirituele stress. Gawdat en zijn medeauteur Alice Law laten in dit boek wetenschappelijk onderbouwd zien hoe voorspelbaar stress is, en dat het daardoor dus goed valt te beheersen. Zij baseren hun kennis mede op hun eigen pijnlijke ervaringen met destructieve stress. Juist omdat zij ook die kwetsbare verhalen met de lezer delen, zijn hun aanbevelingen voor een stressvrij leven oprecht, positief en waardevol.
360 pages, Paperback
Published August 1, 2024
502 people are currently reading
6262 people want to read
About the author
Mo Gawdat
23 books714 followersMohammad "Mo" Gawdat (Arabic: محمد جودت) is an Egyptian entrepreneur and writer. He is the former chief business officer for Google X.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 90 reviews
April 6, 2024
Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Essentials for an advanced reader copy. The opinions expressed are mine alone.
When I started reading “Unstressable” I really didn’t like it. I kept going and am glad I did. It’s still not one I am sure I’ll recommend but there were at least some interesting nuggets of information throughout the last 2/3 of the book. The reason for the low rating is because I felt like there were way too many run-on sentences. This made it hard to follow what the author was trying to say. I also felt like there were too many mnemonic devices the authors made up. While each on their own could have been helpful, I got lost trying to remember what they all meant. I also felt there was a lot of “do this, not that” advice that wasn't practical and/or sensitive to individuals with chronic health conditions. These are often the people who need reign in stress the most and sometimes it felt like the authors minimized the fact we can’t always control how our body responds to stress. They did point out a few times the importance of seeking professional help in cases of trauma or PTSD so that was good at least. Finally, I found it confusing when the authors kept using “I” because I never knew which author was “speaking”.
All in all, while I think the authors had the best intentions in writing this book I am not sure I’ll be recommending it. The writing style felt like one extremely long blog post… I think that a significant portion of the book could have been trimmed out without taking away from the main points and would have made it a more engaging read.
When I started reading “Unstressable” I really didn’t like it. I kept going and am glad I did. It’s still not one I am sure I’ll recommend but there were at least some interesting nuggets of information throughout the last 2/3 of the book. The reason for the low rating is because I felt like there were way too many run-on sentences. This made it hard to follow what the author was trying to say. I also felt like there were too many mnemonic devices the authors made up. While each on their own could have been helpful, I got lost trying to remember what they all meant. I also felt there was a lot of “do this, not that” advice that wasn't practical and/or sensitive to individuals with chronic health conditions. These are often the people who need reign in stress the most and sometimes it felt like the authors minimized the fact we can’t always control how our body responds to stress. They did point out a few times the importance of seeking professional help in cases of trauma or PTSD so that was good at least. Finally, I found it confusing when the authors kept using “I” because I never knew which author was “speaking”.
All in all, while I think the authors had the best intentions in writing this book I am not sure I’ll be recommending it. The writing style felt like one extremely long blog post… I think that a significant portion of the book could have been trimmed out without taking away from the main points and would have made it a more engaging read.
January 6, 2025
I thought Solve For Happy was fantastic so I was hoping for a bit more from this. One or two interesting ideas but nothing groundbreaking and felt like a lot of filler.
February 28, 2024
Special thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free, electronic ARC of this novel received in exchange for an honest review.
Expected publication date: April 30, 2024
Mo Gawdat is an engineer, who used to be the Chief Business Officer at Google. Big deal, right? Well, when Mo’s son died unexpectedly after a routine surgery, he began to question the choices he was making in his life. Pairing up with co-author Alice Law, he wrote “Unstressable: A Practical Guide to Stress-Free Living”, in order to reach a greater community and provide them with the tips needed to enjoy (and live) a stress-free life.
Sounds to good to be true, right? I have read many self-help and non-fiction books that focus on how to destress, reduce anxiety and live a calmer life. My diagnosed anxiety and Type A personality make the most “common” tension reducing methods null and void, as my brain will continue to race like a hamster in a wheel. But I keep trying, and when I got the chance to read “Unstressable” my only thought was- what do I have to lose?
Mo and Alice have both suffered the tragic loss of their fathers (and his son, for Mo, and sister, for Alice) from causes related to stress, and this was the turning point for both of them. “Unstressable” has a little bit of everything, for everyone, from the neuroscience and physics component of the brain and the human body right through to Reiki and the calming of the soul. Not every part will be relevant to everyone, but everyone will find something relevant within these pages.
The book is easy to read and generalizable, to people of all ages, stages and professions. For those of us who have tried therapy, there are a few tried and true tips that we will be familiar with, but Law and Gawdat provide some intriguing ideas as well, that seem worth trying.
I enjoyed the neuroscience aspect of the novel (less so the physics and the math) and although I am not a huge proponent of Eastern medicine, I was still able to find some useful strategies. The authors personify the brain, which was intriguing, using inner dialogue as a way to bring attention to areas of the body that we are lacking. For anyone who finds value in meditation and mindfulness, well, the authors have you covered there, too.
If nothing else, this book provides a unique way to look at stress itself and how it can show up in the body (and mind). It helped me reframe how I look at my inner conversations and self-awareness, and it even provided me with a few tips to try. I don’t see a complete cure to my medically-diagnosed anxiety (but the authors don’t claim to solve this, in their defense) but this book was definitely worth reading!
Expected publication date: April 30, 2024
Mo Gawdat is an engineer, who used to be the Chief Business Officer at Google. Big deal, right? Well, when Mo’s son died unexpectedly after a routine surgery, he began to question the choices he was making in his life. Pairing up with co-author Alice Law, he wrote “Unstressable: A Practical Guide to Stress-Free Living”, in order to reach a greater community and provide them with the tips needed to enjoy (and live) a stress-free life.
Sounds to good to be true, right? I have read many self-help and non-fiction books that focus on how to destress, reduce anxiety and live a calmer life. My diagnosed anxiety and Type A personality make the most “common” tension reducing methods null and void, as my brain will continue to race like a hamster in a wheel. But I keep trying, and when I got the chance to read “Unstressable” my only thought was- what do I have to lose?
Mo and Alice have both suffered the tragic loss of their fathers (and his son, for Mo, and sister, for Alice) from causes related to stress, and this was the turning point for both of them. “Unstressable” has a little bit of everything, for everyone, from the neuroscience and physics component of the brain and the human body right through to Reiki and the calming of the soul. Not every part will be relevant to everyone, but everyone will find something relevant within these pages.
The book is easy to read and generalizable, to people of all ages, stages and professions. For those of us who have tried therapy, there are a few tried and true tips that we will be familiar with, but Law and Gawdat provide some intriguing ideas as well, that seem worth trying.
I enjoyed the neuroscience aspect of the novel (less so the physics and the math) and although I am not a huge proponent of Eastern medicine, I was still able to find some useful strategies. The authors personify the brain, which was intriguing, using inner dialogue as a way to bring attention to areas of the body that we are lacking. For anyone who finds value in meditation and mindfulness, well, the authors have you covered there, too.
If nothing else, this book provides a unique way to look at stress itself and how it can show up in the body (and mind). It helped me reframe how I look at my inner conversations and self-awareness, and it even provided me with a few tips to try. I don’t see a complete cure to my medically-diagnosed anxiety (but the authors don’t claim to solve this, in their defense) but this book was definitely worth reading!
February 7, 2025
1 – Welcome to the Machine
p.52 – Stress is an automatic response. Your stress starts with a trigger, an event that seems like a possible threat takes place. The event stressing you is not even recognized by your thinking brain.
p.55 – Cortisol is a crucial hormone that protects overall health and well-being.
Cortisol helps control blood sugar levels, regulate metabolism, reduce inflammation, and assist with memory formulation. It balances the ratios of salt and water and helps regulate blood pressure.
During moments of stress, however, cortisol serves one primary function – to get you our of trouble. To do this, it needs to direct energy to your brain, so you can think of a way out, and to your muscles, so you’re ready to run or fight of needed. The food your brain prefers to burn for energy is glucose. Cortisol’s clear instructions in moments of stress are for the fat cells to release fat into the bloodstream, and for the liver to release glucose. It tells the muscles to burn only fat so that all the sugar remaining in the bloodstream is available for the brain to burn. The result? A turbocharger that leads superpowered feats – all the energy and focus you need to get things done, save your life as you need to, then come back to your normal self.
p.60 – Modern-day stress often starts with a thought.
p.63 – Our stress machine was not designed to deal with an endless stream of negativity. We need to intervene before those thoughts are generated in the first place if we are to keep our stress response confined to its standard operating environment.
p.65 – Like our mental stress, emotional stress is not dealing with any specific present danger to take on. It is just raging in our hearts. It too lingers for as long as its trigger – the emotion – lasts.
p.68 – This is the worst part of stressors that are triggered by thoughts or emotions. They last for as long as the emotion or thought that triggered them persists, and they multiply because thoughts trigger emotions and emotions trigger thoughts. As a result, the negative feedback loop, the mechanism that is supposed to bring you back to calm, breaks. Cognition, in that case, does not lead to a realization that there is no need to be stressed; instead, it reinstates the same virtual danger it created in the first place and reinforces the need for more stress.
p.72 – High cortisol over prolonged periods of time in cases of chronic stress, however, can lead to many things going wrong.
First, it will break down your muscle tissue.
p.73 – Muscles burn as much as twelve times more calories than any other tissue in your body, even at rest. With less muscle, your metabolism, the ability to burn the calories you eat, goes down. This, during stress is typically combined with increased cravings and appetite so you eat more and provide sugar to fuel your brain. The quicker you get those, the better, and so you eat more and more of the wrong – sugary – stuff. Every side of high cortisol levels points you in the same direction, increasing the likelihood that you might gain fat.
Even the fat you burn when you are in flight-or-fight mode is not the stuff that you want burned. Stress burns your peripheral fat, but it increases visceral fat, which is well known to be a contributor to things like insulin resistance. This leads to more retention of stubborn fat in your body and more food cravings.
p.74 – High cortisol damages the immune protective mucus layer of your gastrointestinal tract. This layer is there to protect you from infections and food sensitivities. Without it, you suffer what is called a leaky gut, which allows food that hasn’t been completely broken down, bacteria, and toxins into your bloodstream. Symptoms of leaky gut syndrome include bloating, food sensitivities, fatigue, digestive issues, skin problems, and of course, even more stress.
Similar to how cortisol metabolizes muscle tissue, it also breaks down bones in search of energy. This leads to diminished bone density and increases the risk of osteoporosis.
p.75 – Cortisol also stimulates your antibody-producing immune system. This suppresses the part of your immune system that actually acts against things like cancer and infections.
High cortisol decreases frontal lobe activity, which is associated with your working memory and your ability to concentrate. Decreased frontal lobe activity is linked to depression and decreased intelligence.
p.85 – Those who seem less stressed face similar challenges the rest of us face. They just know how to deal with them better. Life is full of stressors. We feel less stressed when we learn the skills we need to handle the pressure.
p.88 – It’s not the events of your life that stress you. It’s the way you deal with them that does.
p.99 – Burnout breaks us when we allow the repetition of the same kinds of, often little stressors over and over again. Small, even insignificant stressors often go unacknowledged, sometimes unnoticed, and so they last for longer periods of time.
p.108 – Anxiety is not even directing your thinking to the threat itself at all. Instead, it is totally focused on your capability, or lack of, to deal with it in a way that keeps you safe.
The more confident you feel that you can handle the threat, the less anxious you are, and vice versa. For that, dealing with anxiety is not a question of assessing the threat itself. Rather, it is a practice of questioning your brain’s claim that you won’t be able to handle it when you have handled every other threat that came your way so far.
p.109 – To remove your anxiety, focus not on what concerns you but on assessing and developing your ability to deal with it.
p.115 – Those who are unstressable live true to three practices: they limit, they learn, and they listen.
p.116 – Do what you need to limit the stressors you face every day.
Because stress is not only the result of the challenges we face but is equally the result of our ability to deal with them, a hunger to learn is one of the top qualities.
p.118 – Commit to practicing the habits you learn.
p.119 – Your mind speaks to you all the time, but it tends to exaggerate and morph the truth. If you learn to suspend the unnecessary stress it causes you. Your heart speaks to you all the time, but its language is subtle and blended. When you ignore or misinterpret your emotions, you miss the signs that you need to change direction and heal – to choose love over fear. You body speaks the language of sensations. It could tell you that all is okay through feelings of calm and comfort, or it can scream to alert you in the language of aches and pains. The physical pain we feel when under stress is an alarm that needs to be acknowledged, but it is also an additional reason for the stress. Ignore the language of your body for too long and the unheard screams break you; they could literally even kill you. When you listen to and care for your body, however, the trend reverses and you learn to live stress-free.
p.120 – There is a nonphysical element that simply knows. Call it intuition, a gut feeling, consciousness, or call it your spirit or your soul. When you disconnect from the part of you that is not physical, it doesn’t feel heard and feels stressed too, but when you listen, you get priceless personalized insights on how to live stress-free. Your soul, your intuition, doesn’t speak a language of words or logic. To understand what it’s telling you, you may need to redefine the very concept of what a language actually in the first place.
p.121 – It’s not the events of your life that stress you. It’s the way you deal with them that does.
2 – Trigger (Un)Happy
p.127 – Trauma-triggering stressors are the type of major external events that blindside us on a quiet Sunday and flip our lives upside down. No matter how prepared we think we are, we have no control over what might hit us. A loved one’s cancer diagnosis, the death of someone dear, an accident that keeps you bedbound, a lover who cheats, or the end of a marriage that you thought would last forever. Those traumas not only stress us, they shake our faith in life itself.
p.128 – Everyone, sooner or later, faces a trauma-triggering event. It is just part of the process of being alive. There is nothing you can do to ensure they never happen, but you can surely learn how to deal with them when they hit you.
p.132 – While traumas break us down instantly, leaving us shattered, confused, and trying to collect the pieces, obsessions wear us down over time. They eat us up from the inside.
p.141 – We don’t get depressed because of what the world gives us. We get depressed because of the way we think about what the world gives us.
p.147 – Limit the stressors you allow into your life. Remove them regardless of how insignificant they may seem.
Your experience of a stressor is not only felt in its intensity. It is also felt in its frequency of repetitive application and the time for which it is applied to you.
p.159 – Trauma breaks us almost instantly. It leaves us in shock, breaks our trust in life and others, depletes our energy, and takes away our passion for living. When untended to, it persists in the form of post-traumatic stress or morphs and hides so it lingers for weeks, months, or years, often triggering our obsessions. Obsessions, on the other hand, don’t break us down as fast as trauma does. They wear us out from the inside, lead us to despair and hopelessness, and leave us there.
3 – Carrying That TONN
p.163 – When your share of trauma arrives, seek professional assistance.
p.165 – When life twists your arm, acceptance, which really doesn’t count as doing anything at all, is the only thing you can do on the path to recovery.
p.166 – When life is harsh beyond your control, accept. The sooner the better, so that you can start to rebuild your life after the event that shook it is done. Accept, but don’t just stay there. There is also no point in resigning and surrendering, in lying down at the low point of your life and just giving in. acceptance prepares you for the actual work you need to so – commit.
While you may not be able to mend a broken heart after a tough breakup, you surely can look forward, celebrate life, and find love again. Only if you commit to making your life better despite – or even because of – your loss will you ever find a path to a happy life in a world that is bound to be harsh every now and again.
p.167 – It’s simple. Once you hit rock bottom and accept, commit to one small action that makes your life better today than it was yesterday and another action that will make your life tomorrow better than it is today.
p.169 – Although post-traumatic growth often happens naturally, it can be facilitated in five ways: through education, emotional regulation, disclosure, narrative development, and service.
p.170 – Education leads to a faster path to committed acceptance, which is, perhaps, the most crucial part of our growth.
Passing through serious trauma also gives us the necessary training in terms of emotional regulation. We learn to keep the right frame of mind, which starts with managing negative emotions, such as anxiety, guilt and anger. Discovering the origin of those emotions in the mind’s subconscious belief system is the first step to trauma recovery.
p.171 – Disclosure helps accelerate the process. Talking to others openly about the trauma in an objective way allows you to widen your perspective to see the truth of it and learn different ways to overcome it. Those learnings stay with you post-trauma to continue to facilitate your growth.
The next step is to produce an authentic narrative about the trauma and out lives afterward. Theis helps us accept the chapters already written and imagine a meaningful way forward. This process helps with our ability to appreciate life as it is in comparison to how hard it has been during the tough times. This opens our minds to see the opportunities hidden within every challenge. Those are transferable skills that one can use to deal with future challenges with calm and optimism. This leads to solid growth.
Finally, there are acts of service. People do better in the aftermath of trauma if they find work that benefits others. The ability to help others navigate events similar to the ones they have endured solidifies the learning and leads to a wider understanding of the challenge, thus furthering growth.
p.172 – If you are struggling right now, when it feels like you are losing an uphill battle, remember that you are actually far closer to your own recovery and growth than you know. Keep the faith.
The difference between those who crumble under the pressure and those who fly through and thrive is simple. The latter group lives the full cycle of trauma recovery all the way to growth while others take the hit, start a cycle of obsessive thought, and lie down and blame the world for their calamity.
p.173 – Understanding that trauma is just part of life, that we all face it, both large and small, and most of us recover. It’s not the end of your life, rather a new beginning, so accept it. But don’t just stay there at he lower point of your life; instead commit. Do whatever you can to make your life better despite the challenge, even if there is nothing to do to fix it.
Just do what it takes to make life a little bit better today than yesterday and a little bit better tomorrow than today. Finally, allow the trauma to help you grow. Invest in your education about the topic, seek out a professional who can help you uncover limiting subconscious beliefs that your mind has created as a response to your trauma, and reprogram them. Our minds only ever want to keep us “safe,” so they create subconscious limiting beliefs in response to our traumas, thinking they are helping, when in fact this can keep us stuck in our unhealthy patterns and keep us from moving forward. Uncover yours and replace them with beliefs that serve you. Learn to observe and embrace but also regulate your negative emotions, replacing them with positive optimism about what’s possible. Share and talk about the challenges you face, develop an authentic, comprehensive narrative that extends beyond the negative past into the possible positive future, and engage in acts of service that help others who are experiencing what you have gone through.
p.174 – Often the most effective way to navigate the difficulty in times of struggle is to be willing to ask for help, to know that we are all human and those who have the experience and knowledge might save us countless unnecessary mistakes and suffering.
p.181 – Remove every nuisance that is removable from your daily life, see the remaining ones for what they really are – annoying little things that should not even stress you in the first place.
p.182 – Take some time now, perhaps thirty minutes, to answer the question: What stressors am I simply allowing into my life and needlessly creating within myself that I potentially have the power to limit?
p.183 – Limiting starts with awareness. Write down a long list of your findings. Don’t stop till you run out of things to list. When you’re done, take your list and let’s start working.
p.190 – Morning Routine (15-20 minutes):
• Use a soothing alarm sound to wake you up
• Think of an intentionally good thought before you get out of bed: Today is going to be a good day
• Make your favourite morning drink, the get your journal out: free-write for 5min “How do I feel today?” and list things you are grateful for, set an intention for the day and write it down “I choose to feel calm today” or “today I am going to create…”
• Meditate for 5 minutes: close your eyes, breathe deeply, concentrating only on your breath
p.191 – Evening Routine (10-15 minutes):
• Put your phone away and don’t use it at least an hour before bedtime
• Journalling: list things that brought you joy today, no matter how small, write down something you handled or did well today, write down things you are grateful for
• Connect to your breath for 5 minutes with your eyes closed to relax your mind and body before sleep
• Repeat a positive mantra: I did well today. I am safe. I am relaxed. I am ready for a restful night of sleep and a wonderful day tomorrow.
These routines bring joy and calm into your life.
p.196 – Studies show that constant checkers (those who check their devices several times an hour) are 20 percent more likely to feel stressed than those who don’t.
p.213 – Your mind speaks constantly, but it rarely ever tells you the truth.
Our hearts speak not in words but in feelings and emotions that blend as drops of colour dropped in whirlpools of water. You need to be a bit of an artist, attune to the subtleties of emotions, to sense what your heart is actually saying. You need to develop an appreciation for the whispers and the screams expressed emotionally. You need to break a feeling down to the basic emotions that it is made of. If you don’t fully feel and acknowledge those emotions, a lot gets missed in translation.
p.214 – Our hearts speak to us constantly, but the voice is subtle, blended and often dampened or ignored.
How about our bodies? Those magnificent physical forms speak in the vocabulary of pleasure, pain, vibrancy, depletion, and aches. They speak in unmissable sentences of we pay attention, but we don’t. We notice the messages but ignore the signals and keep pushing through until our bodies start screaming to be heard.
Our bodies speak clearly, but we ignore what they say.
Finally, our souls, which seem to know the whole truth, speak to us in connection and intuition, a language that our hyper-analytical modern world deems inaccurate and accordingly irrelevant. We ignore the words our spirit whispers, and we remain unaware as we stress them.
Our souls speak in the language of intuition, a language that we often distrust and discredit.
4 – It’s in Your Head
p.254 – As you start to move in the direction of fixing the issue your brain is bringing up, you are responding to the fire alarm. This helps your brain find calm and helps you improve the situation at the same time. The minute you move to a problem-solving mindset, you start to make things better and, poof, the fire is gone.
The shortest path to cut stress is to act upon what stresses you.
p.255 – Talking to your brain, as you would to a six-year-old, works. All it wants to know is that you are taking charge and that you will put in the effort to address the matter at hand. Ask yourself the question: Is there something I can do about this?
If there is something you can so, don’t wait. Do it.
Do it even if the doing is limited to putting together a plan of the action that your brain can feel confident enough about.
p.52 – Stress is an automatic response. Your stress starts with a trigger, an event that seems like a possible threat takes place. The event stressing you is not even recognized by your thinking brain.
p.55 – Cortisol is a crucial hormone that protects overall health and well-being.
Cortisol helps control blood sugar levels, regulate metabolism, reduce inflammation, and assist with memory formulation. It balances the ratios of salt and water and helps regulate blood pressure.
During moments of stress, however, cortisol serves one primary function – to get you our of trouble. To do this, it needs to direct energy to your brain, so you can think of a way out, and to your muscles, so you’re ready to run or fight of needed. The food your brain prefers to burn for energy is glucose. Cortisol’s clear instructions in moments of stress are for the fat cells to release fat into the bloodstream, and for the liver to release glucose. It tells the muscles to burn only fat so that all the sugar remaining in the bloodstream is available for the brain to burn. The result? A turbocharger that leads superpowered feats – all the energy and focus you need to get things done, save your life as you need to, then come back to your normal self.
p.60 – Modern-day stress often starts with a thought.
p.63 – Our stress machine was not designed to deal with an endless stream of negativity. We need to intervene before those thoughts are generated in the first place if we are to keep our stress response confined to its standard operating environment.
p.65 – Like our mental stress, emotional stress is not dealing with any specific present danger to take on. It is just raging in our hearts. It too lingers for as long as its trigger – the emotion – lasts.
p.68 – This is the worst part of stressors that are triggered by thoughts or emotions. They last for as long as the emotion or thought that triggered them persists, and they multiply because thoughts trigger emotions and emotions trigger thoughts. As a result, the negative feedback loop, the mechanism that is supposed to bring you back to calm, breaks. Cognition, in that case, does not lead to a realization that there is no need to be stressed; instead, it reinstates the same virtual danger it created in the first place and reinforces the need for more stress.
p.72 – High cortisol over prolonged periods of time in cases of chronic stress, however, can lead to many things going wrong.
First, it will break down your muscle tissue.
p.73 – Muscles burn as much as twelve times more calories than any other tissue in your body, even at rest. With less muscle, your metabolism, the ability to burn the calories you eat, goes down. This, during stress is typically combined with increased cravings and appetite so you eat more and provide sugar to fuel your brain. The quicker you get those, the better, and so you eat more and more of the wrong – sugary – stuff. Every side of high cortisol levels points you in the same direction, increasing the likelihood that you might gain fat.
Even the fat you burn when you are in flight-or-fight mode is not the stuff that you want burned. Stress burns your peripheral fat, but it increases visceral fat, which is well known to be a contributor to things like insulin resistance. This leads to more retention of stubborn fat in your body and more food cravings.
p.74 – High cortisol damages the immune protective mucus layer of your gastrointestinal tract. This layer is there to protect you from infections and food sensitivities. Without it, you suffer what is called a leaky gut, which allows food that hasn’t been completely broken down, bacteria, and toxins into your bloodstream. Symptoms of leaky gut syndrome include bloating, food sensitivities, fatigue, digestive issues, skin problems, and of course, even more stress.
Similar to how cortisol metabolizes muscle tissue, it also breaks down bones in search of energy. This leads to diminished bone density and increases the risk of osteoporosis.
p.75 – Cortisol also stimulates your antibody-producing immune system. This suppresses the part of your immune system that actually acts against things like cancer and infections.
High cortisol decreases frontal lobe activity, which is associated with your working memory and your ability to concentrate. Decreased frontal lobe activity is linked to depression and decreased intelligence.
p.85 – Those who seem less stressed face similar challenges the rest of us face. They just know how to deal with them better. Life is full of stressors. We feel less stressed when we learn the skills we need to handle the pressure.
p.88 – It’s not the events of your life that stress you. It’s the way you deal with them that does.
p.99 – Burnout breaks us when we allow the repetition of the same kinds of, often little stressors over and over again. Small, even insignificant stressors often go unacknowledged, sometimes unnoticed, and so they last for longer periods of time.
p.108 – Anxiety is not even directing your thinking to the threat itself at all. Instead, it is totally focused on your capability, or lack of, to deal with it in a way that keeps you safe.
The more confident you feel that you can handle the threat, the less anxious you are, and vice versa. For that, dealing with anxiety is not a question of assessing the threat itself. Rather, it is a practice of questioning your brain’s claim that you won’t be able to handle it when you have handled every other threat that came your way so far.
p.109 – To remove your anxiety, focus not on what concerns you but on assessing and developing your ability to deal with it.
p.115 – Those who are unstressable live true to three practices: they limit, they learn, and they listen.
p.116 – Do what you need to limit the stressors you face every day.
Because stress is not only the result of the challenges we face but is equally the result of our ability to deal with them, a hunger to learn is one of the top qualities.
p.118 – Commit to practicing the habits you learn.
p.119 – Your mind speaks to you all the time, but it tends to exaggerate and morph the truth. If you learn to suspend the unnecessary stress it causes you. Your heart speaks to you all the time, but its language is subtle and blended. When you ignore or misinterpret your emotions, you miss the signs that you need to change direction and heal – to choose love over fear. You body speaks the language of sensations. It could tell you that all is okay through feelings of calm and comfort, or it can scream to alert you in the language of aches and pains. The physical pain we feel when under stress is an alarm that needs to be acknowledged, but it is also an additional reason for the stress. Ignore the language of your body for too long and the unheard screams break you; they could literally even kill you. When you listen to and care for your body, however, the trend reverses and you learn to live stress-free.
p.120 – There is a nonphysical element that simply knows. Call it intuition, a gut feeling, consciousness, or call it your spirit or your soul. When you disconnect from the part of you that is not physical, it doesn’t feel heard and feels stressed too, but when you listen, you get priceless personalized insights on how to live stress-free. Your soul, your intuition, doesn’t speak a language of words or logic. To understand what it’s telling you, you may need to redefine the very concept of what a language actually in the first place.
p.121 – It’s not the events of your life that stress you. It’s the way you deal with them that does.
2 – Trigger (Un)Happy
p.127 – Trauma-triggering stressors are the type of major external events that blindside us on a quiet Sunday and flip our lives upside down. No matter how prepared we think we are, we have no control over what might hit us. A loved one’s cancer diagnosis, the death of someone dear, an accident that keeps you bedbound, a lover who cheats, or the end of a marriage that you thought would last forever. Those traumas not only stress us, they shake our faith in life itself.
p.128 – Everyone, sooner or later, faces a trauma-triggering event. It is just part of the process of being alive. There is nothing you can do to ensure they never happen, but you can surely learn how to deal with them when they hit you.
p.132 – While traumas break us down instantly, leaving us shattered, confused, and trying to collect the pieces, obsessions wear us down over time. They eat us up from the inside.
p.141 – We don’t get depressed because of what the world gives us. We get depressed because of the way we think about what the world gives us.
p.147 – Limit the stressors you allow into your life. Remove them regardless of how insignificant they may seem.
Your experience of a stressor is not only felt in its intensity. It is also felt in its frequency of repetitive application and the time for which it is applied to you.
p.159 – Trauma breaks us almost instantly. It leaves us in shock, breaks our trust in life and others, depletes our energy, and takes away our passion for living. When untended to, it persists in the form of post-traumatic stress or morphs and hides so it lingers for weeks, months, or years, often triggering our obsessions. Obsessions, on the other hand, don’t break us down as fast as trauma does. They wear us out from the inside, lead us to despair and hopelessness, and leave us there.
3 – Carrying That TONN
p.163 – When your share of trauma arrives, seek professional assistance.
p.165 – When life twists your arm, acceptance, which really doesn’t count as doing anything at all, is the only thing you can do on the path to recovery.
p.166 – When life is harsh beyond your control, accept. The sooner the better, so that you can start to rebuild your life after the event that shook it is done. Accept, but don’t just stay there. There is also no point in resigning and surrendering, in lying down at the low point of your life and just giving in. acceptance prepares you for the actual work you need to so – commit.
While you may not be able to mend a broken heart after a tough breakup, you surely can look forward, celebrate life, and find love again. Only if you commit to making your life better despite – or even because of – your loss will you ever find a path to a happy life in a world that is bound to be harsh every now and again.
p.167 – It’s simple. Once you hit rock bottom and accept, commit to one small action that makes your life better today than it was yesterday and another action that will make your life tomorrow better than it is today.
p.169 – Although post-traumatic growth often happens naturally, it can be facilitated in five ways: through education, emotional regulation, disclosure, narrative development, and service.
p.170 – Education leads to a faster path to committed acceptance, which is, perhaps, the most crucial part of our growth.
Passing through serious trauma also gives us the necessary training in terms of emotional regulation. We learn to keep the right frame of mind, which starts with managing negative emotions, such as anxiety, guilt and anger. Discovering the origin of those emotions in the mind’s subconscious belief system is the first step to trauma recovery.
p.171 – Disclosure helps accelerate the process. Talking to others openly about the trauma in an objective way allows you to widen your perspective to see the truth of it and learn different ways to overcome it. Those learnings stay with you post-trauma to continue to facilitate your growth.
The next step is to produce an authentic narrative about the trauma and out lives afterward. Theis helps us accept the chapters already written and imagine a meaningful way forward. This process helps with our ability to appreciate life as it is in comparison to how hard it has been during the tough times. This opens our minds to see the opportunities hidden within every challenge. Those are transferable skills that one can use to deal with future challenges with calm and optimism. This leads to solid growth.
Finally, there are acts of service. People do better in the aftermath of trauma if they find work that benefits others. The ability to help others navigate events similar to the ones they have endured solidifies the learning and leads to a wider understanding of the challenge, thus furthering growth.
p.172 – If you are struggling right now, when it feels like you are losing an uphill battle, remember that you are actually far closer to your own recovery and growth than you know. Keep the faith.
The difference between those who crumble under the pressure and those who fly through and thrive is simple. The latter group lives the full cycle of trauma recovery all the way to growth while others take the hit, start a cycle of obsessive thought, and lie down and blame the world for their calamity.
p.173 – Understanding that trauma is just part of life, that we all face it, both large and small, and most of us recover. It’s not the end of your life, rather a new beginning, so accept it. But don’t just stay there at he lower point of your life; instead commit. Do whatever you can to make your life better despite the challenge, even if there is nothing to do to fix it.
Just do what it takes to make life a little bit better today than yesterday and a little bit better tomorrow than today. Finally, allow the trauma to help you grow. Invest in your education about the topic, seek out a professional who can help you uncover limiting subconscious beliefs that your mind has created as a response to your trauma, and reprogram them. Our minds only ever want to keep us “safe,” so they create subconscious limiting beliefs in response to our traumas, thinking they are helping, when in fact this can keep us stuck in our unhealthy patterns and keep us from moving forward. Uncover yours and replace them with beliefs that serve you. Learn to observe and embrace but also regulate your negative emotions, replacing them with positive optimism about what’s possible. Share and talk about the challenges you face, develop an authentic, comprehensive narrative that extends beyond the negative past into the possible positive future, and engage in acts of service that help others who are experiencing what you have gone through.
p.174 – Often the most effective way to navigate the difficulty in times of struggle is to be willing to ask for help, to know that we are all human and those who have the experience and knowledge might save us countless unnecessary mistakes and suffering.
p.181 – Remove every nuisance that is removable from your daily life, see the remaining ones for what they really are – annoying little things that should not even stress you in the first place.
p.182 – Take some time now, perhaps thirty minutes, to answer the question: What stressors am I simply allowing into my life and needlessly creating within myself that I potentially have the power to limit?
p.183 – Limiting starts with awareness. Write down a long list of your findings. Don’t stop till you run out of things to list. When you’re done, take your list and let’s start working.
p.190 – Morning Routine (15-20 minutes):
• Use a soothing alarm sound to wake you up
• Think of an intentionally good thought before you get out of bed: Today is going to be a good day
• Make your favourite morning drink, the get your journal out: free-write for 5min “How do I feel today?” and list things you are grateful for, set an intention for the day and write it down “I choose to feel calm today” or “today I am going to create…”
• Meditate for 5 minutes: close your eyes, breathe deeply, concentrating only on your breath
p.191 – Evening Routine (10-15 minutes):
• Put your phone away and don’t use it at least an hour before bedtime
• Journalling: list things that brought you joy today, no matter how small, write down something you handled or did well today, write down things you are grateful for
• Connect to your breath for 5 minutes with your eyes closed to relax your mind and body before sleep
• Repeat a positive mantra: I did well today. I am safe. I am relaxed. I am ready for a restful night of sleep and a wonderful day tomorrow.
These routines bring joy and calm into your life.
p.196 – Studies show that constant checkers (those who check their devices several times an hour) are 20 percent more likely to feel stressed than those who don’t.
p.213 – Your mind speaks constantly, but it rarely ever tells you the truth.
Our hearts speak not in words but in feelings and emotions that blend as drops of colour dropped in whirlpools of water. You need to be a bit of an artist, attune to the subtleties of emotions, to sense what your heart is actually saying. You need to develop an appreciation for the whispers and the screams expressed emotionally. You need to break a feeling down to the basic emotions that it is made of. If you don’t fully feel and acknowledge those emotions, a lot gets missed in translation.
p.214 – Our hearts speak to us constantly, but the voice is subtle, blended and often dampened or ignored.
How about our bodies? Those magnificent physical forms speak in the vocabulary of pleasure, pain, vibrancy, depletion, and aches. They speak in unmissable sentences of we pay attention, but we don’t. We notice the messages but ignore the signals and keep pushing through until our bodies start screaming to be heard.
Our bodies speak clearly, but we ignore what they say.
Finally, our souls, which seem to know the whole truth, speak to us in connection and intuition, a language that our hyper-analytical modern world deems inaccurate and accordingly irrelevant. We ignore the words our spirit whispers, and we remain unaware as we stress them.
Our souls speak in the language of intuition, a language that we often distrust and discredit.
4 – It’s in Your Head
p.254 – As you start to move in the direction of fixing the issue your brain is bringing up, you are responding to the fire alarm. This helps your brain find calm and helps you improve the situation at the same time. The minute you move to a problem-solving mindset, you start to make things better and, poof, the fire is gone.
The shortest path to cut stress is to act upon what stresses you.
p.255 – Talking to your brain, as you would to a six-year-old, works. All it wants to know is that you are taking charge and that you will put in the effort to address the matter at hand. Ask yourself the question: Is there something I can do about this?
If there is something you can so, don’t wait. Do it.
Do it even if the doing is limited to putting together a plan of the action that your brain can feel confident enough about.
June 3, 2024
Mo este o inspirație pentru mine și ideile lui mi se par atât de utile și realiste. Stress is our new addiction. Și cea mai periculoasă as zice.
September 18, 2025
Started strong and has solid points, but it could’ve been half as long. It felt a tad repetitive after a while.
September 4, 2024
This was a fascinating book. It is full of useful ideas and tips to help manage stress, and was really good at helping me recenter my mindset and put boundaries back in place. It is written from a spiritual perspective, so while it can go along with Christianity, the reader has to do the translation. My only complaint is that it is a rather long book, and for people who are easily stressed, it feels a bit stressful to have to read more than 300 pages to help solve your stress.
I received a copy of this book from Netgalley. All thoughts and opinions are entirely my own, and I am writing a voluntary review.
I received a copy of this book from Netgalley. All thoughts and opinions are entirely my own, and I am writing a voluntary review.
December 6, 2025
Strong start, exponential decay.
And as in every self-help book: in the end you know more about the authors than about anything else.
And as in every self-help book: in the end you know more about the authors than about anything else.
January 27, 2025
I heard Mo on a podcast so checked if my library had any of is books and so it was I read Unstressable. As with all this type of book, the key points could be make in half the time however that does not mean it's not worth a read. It contains inspiring and practical advice on how to live stress free. That can be boiled down to healthy habits, mindfulness, and recognising that you have a choice about how you react to anything that happens. That's simplifying it significantly so do give it a go if you think you might benefit.
4/5
Unstressable is a handbook for those who realize stress isn’t what happens to you; it’s how you handle what happens to you. It’s a left brainer’s solution to a modern right-brain problem. Mo Gawdat is an engineer. What most of us see as inchoate, insurmountable problems he sees as systems overloads to tackle and solve. Unstressable breaks stress into inputs and effects, classifying human stressors stress to the mind, stress to emotions, stress to the body, and stress to the soul. Once classified, Gawdat and co-author Alice Law show readers how stress can be predicted—with mathematical certainty—and once predicted, prevented. Unstressable shows readers how most of us deal with the unpleasant, anxiety-producing and even miserable or tragic events in our stress is always a by-product, leading directly to inability to cope, health problems and cratered confidence. Gawdat guides readers to no-woo-woo, all-science-based solutions. He’ll train readers —Develop habits and attitudes of listening and learning that limit stress —Learn the language of de-stressing mind, emotions, body and soul —Respond, not react —Release self-criticism, insomnia, and lethargy —Increase energy, focus and confidence
4/5
Unstressable is a handbook for those who realize stress isn’t what happens to you; it’s how you handle what happens to you. It’s a left brainer’s solution to a modern right-brain problem. Mo Gawdat is an engineer. What most of us see as inchoate, insurmountable problems he sees as systems overloads to tackle and solve. Unstressable breaks stress into inputs and effects, classifying human stressors stress to the mind, stress to emotions, stress to the body, and stress to the soul. Once classified, Gawdat and co-author Alice Law show readers how stress can be predicted—with mathematical certainty—and once predicted, prevented. Unstressable shows readers how most of us deal with the unpleasant, anxiety-producing and even miserable or tragic events in our stress is always a by-product, leading directly to inability to cope, health problems and cratered confidence. Gawdat guides readers to no-woo-woo, all-science-based solutions. He’ll train readers —Develop habits and attitudes of listening and learning that limit stress —Learn the language of de-stressing mind, emotions, body and soul —Respond, not react —Release self-criticism, insomnia, and lethargy —Increase energy, focus and confidence
August 7, 2024
3.5
4 stars for the first half
Almost 3 for the second
4 stars for the first half
Almost 3 for the second
October 1, 2024
It was an ok book with some good advice here and there until Reiki, energy, evil eye, pseudoscience BS arrived.
July 27, 2025
I love Mo, practical and relatable discussions on topics we can all connect with. Takes everyday 'stress' and re-positions it so that you have a clear idea what it really is, how it really works, how you can manage it and what that means. The very best thing is that this is a practical book. it's not the event that stresses us it's how we deal with it, knowing what you can influence or change and understanding some things are out of your control and learning to live with that.
October 24, 2025
Honestly only kept listening because I don’t like giving up on a book. Some interesting ideas but a lot of wacky semi-pagan ones as well. Would not recommend for anyone, especially not Christians.
August 12, 2024
I had a tough time reading it. It was a good book, but it was just me
July 7, 2024
Honestly, I was expecting more from this book because I liked “Solve for Happy” a lot.
My review is based on three key factors:
1) I dislike the style of having two different authors as their language is very different and I found it a bit distracting the constant shift.
2) In all honesty, I didn’t learn much from this book. A lot of things are paraphrased from other books I read before. I think the authors missed an opportunity to back up their recommendations in research and data.
3) Related to number 2, I think this book would be better if it were condensed in fewer than 200 pages. I constantly found myself feeling like I was reading the same things with different words over and over.
My review is based on three key factors:
1) I dislike the style of having two different authors as their language is very different and I found it a bit distracting the constant shift.
2) In all honesty, I didn’t learn much from this book. A lot of things are paraphrased from other books I read before. I think the authors missed an opportunity to back up their recommendations in research and data.
3) Related to number 2, I think this book would be better if it were condensed in fewer than 200 pages. I constantly found myself feeling like I was reading the same things with different words over and over.
October 22, 2024
Stopped reading when they started trying to upsell me their online membership. Felt like a pyramid scheme.
July 24, 2025
This was not what I expected. Mo and Alice delve into stressors and approaches to stress management, but go beyond that to share their lived experience with grief, depression, and even spirituality. I really enjoyed this and left with lots of takeaways to apply to life.
Here are some of my favourite quotes:
“You can’t limit what you don’t recognise.”
“Learn to accept what you can’t change.”
“The more you look for what’s wrong in the world the more the whole world feels wrong.”
“There is beauty only in imperfection.”
“When we don’t understand our own emotions, we can’t explain why we behave the way that we do.”
“Emotions, when unclear, challenge how we see the world.”
“Our repressed emotions are not always recognised by the conscious mind; those emotions remain hidden inside us while we disconnect from our emotional selves.”
“If we don’t connect to the truth of our negative emotions then we can’t possibly connect to the fullness of our positive ones.”
“When we have the courage to turn toward our fear and own it, we can change it.”
“As mammals, our system is designed for seeking pleasure and avoiding pain…wired to evade threats and feel fear.”
“If you do not turn toward your pain and own it, it owns you.”
“Allowing our stress to live largely stems from avoiding it.”
“Fear is the primal, instinctive emotion that keeps us away from all that we need to avoid and evade.”
“Love is the emotion that gets closer to others, to ourselves, to the divine, and all other beings.”
“You fear to love or you love to fear.”
“Emotions are neither good nor bad. They are the signalling system that allows us to navigate the subtleties of our lives so we make the right decisions and avoid danger. They help discern good from bad; help others understand us, and help us understand ourselves.”
“Emotions enable us to experience the true beauty of life as we sense the polarity of our joy and pain.”
“Our negative emotions are only ever trying to alert us to one of two things:
1. Something within yourself that you need to heal
2. Something outside of yourself that you need to change.”
“The body…is a mirror of our inner thoughts and beliefs.”
“To heal your body, you often need to heal your heart first.”
“The body turns what you think into your physical reality.”
“Our minds look for temporary comfort in addictive behaviours.”
“We don’t appreciate the value of our health until we lose it.”
“The wisdom of the soul is the part of us to turn to when the hurricanes hit our lives. It is the only part to look to when we don’t know which way to turn - the part that is connected to the divine.”
“When we can’t change the situation, we are being challenged to change something within ourselves.”
“Getting locked in a continuous cycle of what is wrong for us rather than what is meant for us.”
“You’ll know you’re spiritually calm when your heart aligns with your choices.”
“We have been taught how to think but not how to feel.”
“The soul doesn’t speak the language of fear; the ego does.”
“The soul’s nature reflects some of the greatest qualities of humanity combined; our divine nature.”
“You’ve ignored your intuition every time you’ve spoken yes but have meant no.”
“The truth behind self-love, the spiritual truth, goes far beyond what any # trending on instagram says it means. True love for yourself goes … to seeing yourself fully; looking at your shadow side and your strengths, then having the courage to not look away when you might not like all that you see. Recognising what’s there & then accepting, unconditionally, all that you are.”
“Remember, that the light within us is only amplified by the shadows that lie next to it.”
“The acceptance of ourselves, once we finally see ourselves truly, is the bridge between our humanity and our divinity.”
“Anything we are denying is a part that we need to heal.”
“It’s not the things in our lives that stress us; it’s the way we think about them that does.”
“When it comes to our emotions, what we resist, persists.”
“When we relinquish control, we allow space for soulful surrender.”
Here are some of my favourite quotes:
“You can’t limit what you don’t recognise.”
“Learn to accept what you can’t change.”
“The more you look for what’s wrong in the world the more the whole world feels wrong.”
“There is beauty only in imperfection.”
“When we don’t understand our own emotions, we can’t explain why we behave the way that we do.”
“Emotions, when unclear, challenge how we see the world.”
“Our repressed emotions are not always recognised by the conscious mind; those emotions remain hidden inside us while we disconnect from our emotional selves.”
“If we don’t connect to the truth of our negative emotions then we can’t possibly connect to the fullness of our positive ones.”
“When we have the courage to turn toward our fear and own it, we can change it.”
“As mammals, our system is designed for seeking pleasure and avoiding pain…wired to evade threats and feel fear.”
“If you do not turn toward your pain and own it, it owns you.”
“Allowing our stress to live largely stems from avoiding it.”
“Fear is the primal, instinctive emotion that keeps us away from all that we need to avoid and evade.”
“Love is the emotion that gets closer to others, to ourselves, to the divine, and all other beings.”
“You fear to love or you love to fear.”
“Emotions are neither good nor bad. They are the signalling system that allows us to navigate the subtleties of our lives so we make the right decisions and avoid danger. They help discern good from bad; help others understand us, and help us understand ourselves.”
“Emotions enable us to experience the true beauty of life as we sense the polarity of our joy and pain.”
“Our negative emotions are only ever trying to alert us to one of two things:
1. Something within yourself that you need to heal
2. Something outside of yourself that you need to change.”
“The body…is a mirror of our inner thoughts and beliefs.”
“To heal your body, you often need to heal your heart first.”
“The body turns what you think into your physical reality.”
“Our minds look for temporary comfort in addictive behaviours.”
“We don’t appreciate the value of our health until we lose it.”
“The wisdom of the soul is the part of us to turn to when the hurricanes hit our lives. It is the only part to look to when we don’t know which way to turn - the part that is connected to the divine.”
“When we can’t change the situation, we are being challenged to change something within ourselves.”
“Getting locked in a continuous cycle of what is wrong for us rather than what is meant for us.”
“You’ll know you’re spiritually calm when your heart aligns with your choices.”
“We have been taught how to think but not how to feel.”
“The soul doesn’t speak the language of fear; the ego does.”
“The soul’s nature reflects some of the greatest qualities of humanity combined; our divine nature.”
“You’ve ignored your intuition every time you’ve spoken yes but have meant no.”
“The truth behind self-love, the spiritual truth, goes far beyond what any # trending on instagram says it means. True love for yourself goes … to seeing yourself fully; looking at your shadow side and your strengths, then having the courage to not look away when you might not like all that you see. Recognising what’s there & then accepting, unconditionally, all that you are.”
“Remember, that the light within us is only amplified by the shadows that lie next to it.”
“The acceptance of ourselves, once we finally see ourselves truly, is the bridge between our humanity and our divinity.”
“Anything we are denying is a part that we need to heal.”
“It’s not the things in our lives that stress us; it’s the way we think about them that does.”
“When it comes to our emotions, what we resist, persists.”
“When we relinquish control, we allow space for soulful surrender.”
November 28, 2023
"Unstressable" by Mo Gawdat is a profound guide to navigating the complexities of modern life with grace and resilience. Gawdat, known for his insights on happiness and well-being, takes readers on a transformative journey toward a stress-free existence. The book skillfully combines scientific research, personal anecdotes, and practical advice to provide a holistic approach to stress management.
Gawdat's writing is both engaging and empathetic, making complex concepts accessible to a wide audience. He explores the root causes of stress and offers actionable strategies to cultivate a mindset that can withstand life's challenges. The author draws on his own experiences, including lessons learned from his time at Google X, adding authenticity to his words.
"Unstressable" is not just a self-help book; it's a thoughtful exploration of the human condition and a roadmap to a more fulfilling life. Gawdat's unique perspective, grounded in his engineering background and deep understanding of happiness science, sets this book apart. Whether you're facing professional pressures or personal struggles, "Unstressable" is a timely and invaluable resource for anyone seeking a balanced and harmonious life.
Gawdat's writing is both engaging and empathetic, making complex concepts accessible to a wide audience. He explores the root causes of stress and offers actionable strategies to cultivate a mindset that can withstand life's challenges. The author draws on his own experiences, including lessons learned from his time at Google X, adding authenticity to his words.
"Unstressable" is not just a self-help book; it's a thoughtful exploration of the human condition and a roadmap to a more fulfilling life. Gawdat's unique perspective, grounded in his engineering background and deep understanding of happiness science, sets this book apart. Whether you're facing professional pressures or personal struggles, "Unstressable" is a timely and invaluable resource for anyone seeking a balanced and harmonious life.
November 23, 2025
I picked this up from the library based on the title alone, so I didn't have any background on the authors. I think this is another one of those books where if you are already bought into the authors' community, you love this. If you're not a part of the club, you're left scratching your head as to what the fuss is about. I didn't glean new information about stress or stress management from this book. I also found the switching between author voices and the multiple subheadings distracting rather than helpful. This book needed tighter editing: it felt like they were just trying to hit a word count. Would not recommend.
March 9, 2025
Ondanks de vaak houterige schrijfstijl en vertaling en de onvergeeflijke gewoonte om elke paar paragrafen samen te vatten in een slogan, vond ik dit een veelomvattend werk waarin mogelijke oorzaken van stress diepgaand in kaart worden gebracht.
Want to read
February 13, 2024#GoodreadsGiveaway
November 25, 2025
A disappointing book, but not altogether useless.
It contains some helpfull mental models for how to think about stress and stress management, like the stress equation. It also contains some interesting science on stress in the beginning and some usefull tips at the end (last chapter) that is worth reading.
The rest is utter garbage, especially the Alice Law parts. They are not just useless, but dangerous - suggesting to some extent to abandon rationality in favor of shamanism/spirituality.
Nothing original either - skip it.
It contains some helpfull mental models for how to think about stress and stress management, like the stress equation. It also contains some interesting science on stress in the beginning and some usefull tips at the end (last chapter) that is worth reading.
The rest is utter garbage, especially the Alice Law parts. They are not just useless, but dangerous - suggesting to some extent to abandon rationality in favor of shamanism/spirituality.
Nothing original either - skip it.
October 13, 2024
Just finished reading the book "Unstressable: A practical guide to Stress Free Living" because hey who doesn't want to be "Unstressable" right😃
I wanted to read this book after reading an interview with the authors in the newspaper. It was intriguing- I wanted to know how you can be "Unstressable".
I found the first half of the book a bit of a chore to get through (What is stress etc), but it picked up half way with some interesting ideas and other methods I had forgotten about. The second half of the book however also delved into pseudo science and spirituality.
I can't say there was much "new information" in this book. But I'm going to give "tapping" a go at some point I think, see if it works..
Other things I have forgotten about are visualisation, journalling and restorative yoga.
Things we all need reminders on included how bad our phones really are for stress which is full of bad news usually. The author recommends a deep dive into your Digital health app- and cutting back drastically. Resting is not sitting on the lounge binge watching TV shows either...although bizarrely the author claims his best way to relax is to smoke a cigar outside (!!!). Relaxing = simply go for a walk out in nature.
Alot of the advice was obvious and have read elsewhere.
The book was good, but overall nothing really new. 3.5/5.
I wanted to read this book after reading an interview with the authors in the newspaper. It was intriguing- I wanted to know how you can be "Unstressable".
I found the first half of the book a bit of a chore to get through (What is stress etc), but it picked up half way with some interesting ideas and other methods I had forgotten about. The second half of the book however also delved into pseudo science and spirituality.
I can't say there was much "new information" in this book. But I'm going to give "tapping" a go at some point I think, see if it works..
Other things I have forgotten about are visualisation, journalling and restorative yoga.
Things we all need reminders on included how bad our phones really are for stress which is full of bad news usually. The author recommends a deep dive into your Digital health app- and cutting back drastically. Resting is not sitting on the lounge binge watching TV shows either...although bizarrely the author claims his best way to relax is to smoke a cigar outside (!!!). Relaxing = simply go for a walk out in nature.
Alot of the advice was obvious and have read elsewhere.
The book was good, but overall nothing really new. 3.5/5.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 8, 2024
This was a book that I wanted to read and for the first time in my life I preordred it before publication. A well written and very well researched book which gave me a lot of practical help and ideas to tackle my stress which has some impact on my life. Alice Law was not given the recognition for her contribution in the publicity material that I have heard Mo Gawdat complain about. The duo worked well together and Alice would come more from the heart & Mo from the logic and together they produced the whole. Majority of the book contained really practicale ways of dealing with and removing strees many of which I will do my best to adopt in my own life. I was less able to take onboard the section talking about the soul. All in all a great read that I would recomend to anyone living in the madness of the modern world.
June 7, 2025
Unstressable is not a book — it's a marketing brochure for a subscription-based community that offers little more than generic wellness platitudes. Instead of delivering actionable insights or genuine wisdom, it pushes you toward signing up for yet another online "community" under the guise of helping you "de-stress."
The content is shallow, repetitive, and insultingly obvious. It exploits readers who are genuinely seeking support, offering empty promises and vague feel-good language that could have been generated by a bot. You’d get more peace of mind by turning off your phone and going for a walk in nature.
Don't waste your time or money. Drop the book, unsubscribe from the hype, and reconnect with the real world.
The content is shallow, repetitive, and insultingly obvious. It exploits readers who are genuinely seeking support, offering empty promises and vague feel-good language that could have been generated by a bot. You’d get more peace of mind by turning off your phone and going for a walk in nature.
Don't waste your time or money. Drop the book, unsubscribe from the hype, and reconnect with the real world.
Read
August 22, 2024"Spirituality has been transformed by humans into something that is essentially becoming more and more un-spiritual: a controlled set of ideals that we must adhere to by a person of authority, or else we cannot possibly have any connection with the divine; an argued dispute over whose religion is "better" or "right." But does "I'm right, you're wrong" really seem that spiritual to you?"
"If we make it our priority to ensure that we avoid the little stressors by, perhaps, taking a different path through our commute or turning that traffic jam into an opportunity for listening to a podcast we wouldn't have had the time to, there would not be any need to struggle with those undesirable stressful events. The unstressable make it a habit to take stock and remove the events they can from their lives as soon as they observe them surfacing."
"Over the years, experienced CEOs gain the skills, courage, and determination to make life right when things go wrong. When any part of their business doesn't go according to plan, they ask to be fully informed of the truth, and then they ask for action to fix things or at least make them better. As the CEO of your own life, you should do the same."
"When an event in life stresses or challenges you, you need to ask three questions. Is it true? ... If the answer to this question is "No, it's not true," then drop it. There is no point being stressed about anything that is not true. However, if it is true, then it's time for the next question: What can I do to fix it? ... What should you do, then, when faced with finality? You ask yourself the third question: Is there something I can do to make my life better despite that happened? The third and most effective question for the Jedi Masters of all who are unstressable is: Can I accept what happened as the new baseline of my life? Not because I'm weak but because I'm strong enough to recognize that this is what it is. And then can I commit to make things better, despite the presence of something that I wish was not part of my life? ... So what's the point of sitting in the corner, complaining and feeling sad for themselves and stressed about their current reality? This stress doesn't add to their ability to solve the problem. In fact, it takes away from it."
"The unstressable see, accept, and love all that they are. They extend the same kindness to themselves as they do to others, living from a place that embodies the divinity within them, extending kindness, gratitude, and joy, and moving away from judgment. They try to live in alignment with their spiritual natures. Even when the world is trying desperately to make them act purely as humans, they don't allow themselves to live in this space for long. They noticed when they are stressed, when they falter, and they pull themselves back to their spiritual truth in their hardest moments by simply asking, "What would my soul do?" They realize there is a divine potential within them that is theirs and theirs alone. They spend their lives seeking to evolve this part of them, to seek to be in alignment with the wishes of their souls. They are acutely aware that the more they learn, the more they realize they do not know, that sometimes the question is not meant to be answered, but experienced.
"If we make it our priority to ensure that we avoid the little stressors by, perhaps, taking a different path through our commute or turning that traffic jam into an opportunity for listening to a podcast we wouldn't have had the time to, there would not be any need to struggle with those undesirable stressful events. The unstressable make it a habit to take stock and remove the events they can from their lives as soon as they observe them surfacing."
"Over the years, experienced CEOs gain the skills, courage, and determination to make life right when things go wrong. When any part of their business doesn't go according to plan, they ask to be fully informed of the truth, and then they ask for action to fix things or at least make them better. As the CEO of your own life, you should do the same."
"When an event in life stresses or challenges you, you need to ask three questions. Is it true? ... If the answer to this question is "No, it's not true," then drop it. There is no point being stressed about anything that is not true. However, if it is true, then it's time for the next question: What can I do to fix it? ... What should you do, then, when faced with finality? You ask yourself the third question: Is there something I can do to make my life better despite that happened? The third and most effective question for the Jedi Masters of all who are unstressable is: Can I accept what happened as the new baseline of my life? Not because I'm weak but because I'm strong enough to recognize that this is what it is. And then can I commit to make things better, despite the presence of something that I wish was not part of my life? ... So what's the point of sitting in the corner, complaining and feeling sad for themselves and stressed about their current reality? This stress doesn't add to their ability to solve the problem. In fact, it takes away from it."
"The unstressable see, accept, and love all that they are. They extend the same kindness to themselves as they do to others, living from a place that embodies the divinity within them, extending kindness, gratitude, and joy, and moving away from judgment. They try to live in alignment with their spiritual natures. Even when the world is trying desperately to make them act purely as humans, they don't allow themselves to live in this space for long. They noticed when they are stressed, when they falter, and they pull themselves back to their spiritual truth in their hardest moments by simply asking, "What would my soul do?" They realize there is a divine potential within them that is theirs and theirs alone. They spend their lives seeking to evolve this part of them, to seek to be in alignment with the wishes of their souls. They are acutely aware that the more they learn, the more they realize they do not know, that sometimes the question is not meant to be answered, but experienced.
March 21, 2024
3.5 stars
Thank you to St. Martin's Essentials and the authors, Mo Gawdat and Alice Law, for the free ARC in exchange for an honest review.
First, I want to mention that because this book isn't officially released until April of 2024, I won't really be talking about grammar/punctuation errors that much. While there are some throughout the book, it's also an unpublished version and so it's to be expected that the official release will have been edited and combed through.
Also, there is a lot of repeating sentences/phrases/ideas but again, those are all editing points and I believe that those mistakes would be fixed for the official release.
That said, this was a very good book. I'm not usually a fan of self-help books; I find them boring or very privileged. Usually the author talks about a pretty relatable experience and then breaks the illusion by talking about quitting their job and hoping on a plane or something. Basically, doing something that the average person may struggle to do.
However, both Mo and Alice talk about very real and traumatic personal experiences. They talk openly about these events to show not only a sense of "relatability" but also how these dark and difficult times can be overcome. How, even in the face of tragedy, it's not game over. I appreciate the honesty and rawness.
Also, some of the points made are very good and helpful. I highlighted a lot of the points I really found useful. Alice takes on a more spiritual/human side to emotions/stress and the mind, while Mo takes on a more logical/mathematical stance. This helps level the points made.
Now, since this is an early version, I can't really use any quotes because the book is subject to editing and change.
I want to talk about the "talking to your brain" segment. I think Alice called her brain "Becky"? It was almost kind of shocking that the brain will eventually just exhaust an idea (even an negative one) if you press it to move on.
Brain: you suck
Me: okay cool what else
Brain: you really suck
Me: we already talked about that, what else
Brain: ...I like Goku
Me: yes I do
(Basically, acknowledging the thought and moving forward will confuse the negative process and force the brain to continue. Sometimes focusing on something else negative but usually just moving forward with a different thought since the initial one has already been addressed.)
Conclusion: a good read and I do recommend picking this one up when it releases in April. Hopefully it's edited a bit beforehand but honestly it had a lot of really good information and helpful tips on managing stress (not treating it, but helping manage it when it seems uncontrollable.)
Thank you to St. Martin's Essentials and the authors, Mo Gawdat and Alice Law, for the free ARC in exchange for an honest review.
First, I want to mention that because this book isn't officially released until April of 2024, I won't really be talking about grammar/punctuation errors that much. While there are some throughout the book, it's also an unpublished version and so it's to be expected that the official release will have been edited and combed through.
Also, there is a lot of repeating sentences/phrases/ideas but again, those are all editing points and I believe that those mistakes would be fixed for the official release.
That said, this was a very good book. I'm not usually a fan of self-help books; I find them boring or very privileged. Usually the author talks about a pretty relatable experience and then breaks the illusion by talking about quitting their job and hoping on a plane or something. Basically, doing something that the average person may struggle to do.
However, both Mo and Alice talk about very real and traumatic personal experiences. They talk openly about these events to show not only a sense of "relatability" but also how these dark and difficult times can be overcome. How, even in the face of tragedy, it's not game over. I appreciate the honesty and rawness.
Also, some of the points made are very good and helpful. I highlighted a lot of the points I really found useful. Alice takes on a more spiritual/human side to emotions/stress and the mind, while Mo takes on a more logical/mathematical stance. This helps level the points made.
Now, since this is an early version, I can't really use any quotes because the book is subject to editing and change.
I want to talk about the "talking to your brain" segment. I think Alice called her brain "Becky"? It was almost kind of shocking that the brain will eventually just exhaust an idea (even an negative one) if you press it to move on.
Brain: you suck
Me: okay cool what else
Brain: you really suck
Me: we already talked about that, what else
Brain: ...I like Goku
Me: yes I do
(Basically, acknowledging the thought and moving forward will confuse the negative process and force the brain to continue. Sometimes focusing on something else negative but usually just moving forward with a different thought since the initial one has already been addressed.)
Conclusion: a good read and I do recommend picking this one up when it releases in April. Hopefully it's edited a bit beforehand but honestly it had a lot of really good information and helpful tips on managing stress (not treating it, but helping manage it when it seems uncontrollable.)
December 30, 2025
I had high hopes for this book but was very disappointed. Its a book of contradictions. Some of the advice is well researched and has some good sources in fields such as neuroscience and psychology. Then there is a lot of spiritual elements. Now full disclosure I am humanist, who has been meditating for over 30 years, as a result the whole section on spiritual stress had me irked from the get go. I lost count of the amount of times that one of the Authors talked about souls and 'our souls' which by the way on the audio book did have me giggling numerous times. The whole section on spiritual stress could have been a page. There was nothing really interesting and instead talking I feel focusing on a 'compassionate self' would have been a time well spent.
The book spends a lot of time positioning itself on fact and engineering then dives off a cliff with certain spiritual practices, which I know work for some people but in an increasingly secular world feel a bit off. The section on mindfulness was good but again there are much better books out there about mindfulness and are more complete.
I wanted to enjoy this book however in it there is nothing new. Happiness trap and Reality slap by Russ Harris are far better as is the Compassionate Mind by Paul Gilbert. These explore a lot of what this book skirts around and they do it in a better way and genuinely easier to read. I would not reccomend this book to anyone who is looking to be unstressable. I would not recommend this book to anyone.
The book spends a lot of time positioning itself on fact and engineering then dives off a cliff with certain spiritual practices, which I know work for some people but in an increasingly secular world feel a bit off. The section on mindfulness was good but again there are much better books out there about mindfulness and are more complete.
I wanted to enjoy this book however in it there is nothing new. Happiness trap and Reality slap by Russ Harris are far better as is the Compassionate Mind by Paul Gilbert. These explore a lot of what this book skirts around and they do it in a better way and genuinely easier to read. I would not reccomend this book to anyone who is looking to be unstressable. I would not recommend this book to anyone.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 1, 2024
If you're anything like me and you frequently describe yourself as "stressed out" (or it's synonyms: tired, overwhelmed, exhausted, strung out, spread too thin, snowed under, drowning), 'Unstressable' is for you!
In the first section, Mo and Alice examine the pervasiveness of chronic stress. They explain that stress isn’t a problem if it comes, helps us overcome a challenge, and dissipates. The stress epidemic nowadays us caused by chronic stress which our bodies and brains were not designed to handle, and which is, quite honestly, killing us. Learning to become "unstressable" is a combination of stoicism (taking action on what we can change and accepting what we can't) and learning the language of our bodies to be able to respond to the real or potential threats they are alerting us to.
The second section of the book is a language course in learning to understand and converse with your mind and body. In the 21st century, particularly in the West, we rarely face life-or-death physical threats; instead, most of our stress begins with a thought.
Learning the language of MENTAL STRESS teaches us that the brain is just alerting us to potential threats, which we can acknowledge and verify without letting them spiral.
Learning the language of EMOTIONAL STRESS is similar: acknowledging what we are feeling, verifying the message or unmet need behind the emotion, and acting upon it by telling ourselves that we've heard the alarm and giving ourselves permission to redirect that emotional energy.
Learning the language of PHYSICAL STRESS means realising that when we don’t pay attention to the first two, our bodies inflame, crying out to us with tension, aches, pains, and sickness. When we learn how stress manifests within us individually, we can work to release it. (The book gives practical suggestions for how to do this.)
Finally, learning the language of SPIRITUAL STRESS (something everyone faces, even if you aren’t religious) means acknowledging that we have a life force that is more than our consciousness. Some call this intuition, but Mo and Alice prefer to call it 'soul' or 'spirit'. Learning it's language, we learn to trust out intuition and listen for the wisdom it wants to bring to our attention.
Learning to be unstressable doesn’t mean we never experience stress, but that when we do, we have greater control over the stresses we allow into our lives and we're equipped to deal with stressors quickly so they do not linger.
Evidence shows that stress and stress-related illnesses are the biggest killers in the West. It's time to learn how stress works, how it's gotten out of control, and what we can do about it.
'Unstressable' is an informative, highly practical book, best enjoyed over a few weeks as you learn and apply each lesson. I'm so glad I read this when I did, and I hope that, in time, many more busy students, high-flying executives, and stressed out parents read this too.
In the first section, Mo and Alice examine the pervasiveness of chronic stress. They explain that stress isn’t a problem if it comes, helps us overcome a challenge, and dissipates. The stress epidemic nowadays us caused by chronic stress which our bodies and brains were not designed to handle, and which is, quite honestly, killing us. Learning to become "unstressable" is a combination of stoicism (taking action on what we can change and accepting what we can't) and learning the language of our bodies to be able to respond to the real or potential threats they are alerting us to.
The second section of the book is a language course in learning to understand and converse with your mind and body. In the 21st century, particularly in the West, we rarely face life-or-death physical threats; instead, most of our stress begins with a thought.
Learning the language of MENTAL STRESS teaches us that the brain is just alerting us to potential threats, which we can acknowledge and verify without letting them spiral.
Learning the language of EMOTIONAL STRESS is similar: acknowledging what we are feeling, verifying the message or unmet need behind the emotion, and acting upon it by telling ourselves that we've heard the alarm and giving ourselves permission to redirect that emotional energy.
Learning the language of PHYSICAL STRESS means realising that when we don’t pay attention to the first two, our bodies inflame, crying out to us with tension, aches, pains, and sickness. When we learn how stress manifests within us individually, we can work to release it. (The book gives practical suggestions for how to do this.)
Finally, learning the language of SPIRITUAL STRESS (something everyone faces, even if you aren’t religious) means acknowledging that we have a life force that is more than our consciousness. Some call this intuition, but Mo and Alice prefer to call it 'soul' or 'spirit'. Learning it's language, we learn to trust out intuition and listen for the wisdom it wants to bring to our attention.
Learning to be unstressable doesn’t mean we never experience stress, but that when we do, we have greater control over the stresses we allow into our lives and we're equipped to deal with stressors quickly so they do not linger.
Evidence shows that stress and stress-related illnesses are the biggest killers in the West. It's time to learn how stress works, how it's gotten out of control, and what we can do about it.
'Unstressable' is an informative, highly practical book, best enjoyed over a few weeks as you learn and apply each lesson. I'm so glad I read this when I did, and I hope that, in time, many more busy students, high-flying executives, and stressed out parents read this too.
April 14, 2025
This one didn’t quite hit the mark for me, especially compared to Mo Gawdat’s other books, which I’ve really enjoyed and rated much more highly. I found those earlier reads gave me new insights or perspectives that stuck with me (note not read them in order of release- recommend the AI book (Scary Smart)) whereas Unstressable felt more like familiar self-help territory.
There are useful reminders and quick tips, and I do appreciate anything that supports all aspects of wellbeing. But it’s a pretty chunky read, and I found it harder to stick with at times. It’s hard to know if that’s just down to timing or the sheer volume of similar material I’ve already read, but it didn’t feel as reflective or thought-provoking as I expected.
It also wasn’t always clear whose voice was coming through – Mo’s or Alice’s – and I think it would’ve helped to distinguish between the two a bit more. That lack of clarity made it harder to connect at times. I also think if I listened in it would have landed better.
So while it’s not without value, and might be more impactful for someone newer to this space, it felt a bit “samee” compared to Mo’s other work.
There are useful reminders and quick tips, and I do appreciate anything that supports all aspects of wellbeing. But it’s a pretty chunky read, and I found it harder to stick with at times. It’s hard to know if that’s just down to timing or the sheer volume of similar material I’ve already read, but it didn’t feel as reflective or thought-provoking as I expected.
It also wasn’t always clear whose voice was coming through – Mo’s or Alice’s – and I think it would’ve helped to distinguish between the two a bit more. That lack of clarity made it harder to connect at times. I also think if I listened in it would have landed better.
So while it’s not without value, and might be more impactful for someone newer to this space, it felt a bit “samee” compared to Mo’s other work.
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