Book excerpt: Can you imagine a world where drug companies throw bake sales to make ends meet? A world without all the jaw clenching, nail biting, and stress-induced melt downs? Eighty percent of health problems today are due to the downstream effects of stress, so learning to break free from stress could dramatically improve your mood, your relationships, your health—and your life. In Wired for Joy, researcher and New York Times bestselling author Laurel Mellin presents a simple yet proven way to train your brain to move through stress and back to joy. Her method has been called the missing link in health care, as it focuses on rewiring the emotional brain—the caldron of our stress—rather than the thinking brain, which has been the focus of most other stress-busting methods. Based on the cutting-edge science of neuroplasticity, Mellin outlines the five states of the emotional brain. For each state she presents a specific tool that easily and quickly switches the brain back to a state of well-being. Once you know how to make that switch, life becomes easier, and stress symptoms—depression, anxiety, overeating, high blood pressure—tend to fade. Finally, instead of focusing on the symptoms of stress, we can change the wiring that triggers it and experience new sense of freedom in our lives.