This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice.

In the quiet moments before dawn, when the world still sleeps and our minds begin to stir, many of us find ourselves already cataloguing the day's worries. The presentation at work, the bills that need paying, the family obligations that seem to multiply like weeds in an untended garden. This early morning anxiety has become so commonplace that we've begun to accept it as normal, as simply part of being an adult in today's fast-paced world.

But what if this acceptance is part of the problem? What if the stress that we've normalized is actually stealing our capacity for joy, creativity, and genuine connection with others? The truth is that while stress has always been part of the human experience, the chronic, unrelenting nature of modern stress represents something fundamentally different from what our ancestors faced.

Our nervous systems evolved to handle acute threats: the sudden appearance of a predator, a natural disaster, or immediate physical danger. In these situations, stress serves us well, flooding our bodies with adrenaline and cortisol to help us fight or flee. But our modern stressors rarely resolve themselves in minutes or hours. Instead, they linger for weeks, months, or even years, keeping our stress response system perpetually activated.