Is it possible that how we think about and interact with stress can help us avoid some of the consequences we don’t want?
- Maybe there is something good about stress worth embracing so that your mindset could help you harness some of your personal strengths.
- to help you harness the strength in your community.
- Maybe we can get some positive outcomes we don’t usually associate with stress.
Stress is a paradox. Stress is not something that we often get to choose
- If we had a wish list, we couldn’t say “I want this much stress, and this type of stress.”
The Stress Mindset Effect
- There are ways of thinking about stress that can make your body’s response to stress healthier.
- That can change what happens in your brain in moments of stress that make you braver, more resilient, and/or more willing to accept help from others.
- And these mindsets basically change the trajectory of how stress affects you.
There is no such thing as good stress or bad stress. That is a big misconception around stress.
- Forget good stress bad stress, because it sets us up to think that we’re experiencing what all of us will instinctively say we didn’t want – the “bad stress” – and that’s the real stress for most of us.
- Most of us don’t get to choose how stressful our lives are, and how stressful the world is.
- Life can be difficult, and that can be good or bad.
Stress is what arises in you when something that you care about is at stake
- It’s your thoughts
- It’s your emotions
- It’s your biology
- It’s the stress hormones
- It’s the adrenaline
- It’s your desire to reach out to others
- It’s sometimes a sense of outrage and anger
- It’s all the stuff that emerges to help you meet a moment that matters
Re-source: Response
a reaction to something : an excitation of a nerve impulse caused by a change or event : a physical reaction to a specific stimulus or situation
In moments of stress some of our instincts are going to be healthy and helpful, and others are not. There’s a lot of different ways to be good at stress, and that’s what we should focus on.
- Rather than stress being good or bad, it’s about learning more about your stress responses.
- With the repertoire that’s available to you, how do you get good at stress so that you can tell in a moment of stress…
- “Is this a moment that requires slowing down and going within?”
- “Is this a moment that requires being vulnerable and asking for help?”
- “Is this a moment that requires ignoring everything else and rising to the challenge because it’s an emergency and i need that adrenaline to do it?”
Human nature has a lot of instincts that are destructive and harmful and human nature has a lot of instincts that are beautiful and wonderful.
- Our greatness and aspiration can be to make peace with that truth, and being able to make choices that bring out in ourselves and other people the good instincts.
- That’s what we can strive for.
craving and resource from “The Secret To Making Stress Your Friend” by Kelly McGonigal with Lewis Howes