Tag: stress mindset

What if someone told you that stress is a good thing? Stress can build your self esteem, and sharpen your character and make you successful. Over the years in her practice as a health psychologist , Kelly McGonigal has promoted that stress is an enemy to be fought against in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Today, ten years later, in her milestone TedGlobal Talk on How to Make Stress Your Friend, Kelly admits that she was completely wrong all this time.
She realised that one’s belief that if stress is a good thing, it changes your physical and mental state thus allowing you to live longer. How is that possible? During a 8 year research in the U.S. following a group of 30,000 people on how they deal with stress including death from stress, 182,000 people had died prematurely not from stress but from the belief that stress was bad for you. That study also showed that one group of people who chose to believe stress was positive, tests showed their heart vessels would reflect a state that emanated joy and courage.
“TAKE AWAYS: First, change your mindset in order to experience stress as your body’s way to prepare you for the challenge. Second, help and care for others in order to manage the risk of death due to stress.”
Furthermore, though you often encounter your adrenaline running high under stress, your body also releases oxytocin, known as the love hormone. With both your adrenalin and oxytocin running not only would you be elevating your life’s perspective, taking on a different path, you want to do anything and everything in your power to achieve the best and stress becomes a more pleasant and enjoyable experience. Choosing to understand and accept stress as a friend rather than a foe will change your approach to everyone in your life and in everything you do. You would then welcome any thing that came your way as an opportunity, exert a new found excitement of new possibilities and take you to live a life of success, whatever that may mean to you.
Kelly also refers to another study which found that major crisis events have no significant impact on the risk of death due to stress for people who are involved in activities around caring and helping others. Once again we seem to find evidence that self-awareness of body and mind and the subsequent change of mental and physical strategies within ourselves – applying kindness and compassion amongst others – are key to well-being and longevity.