Here is what may sound like a crazy idea – “What if changing how you think about stress can make you healthier?”
Now I know what you would say to this:
- “Stress is bad.”
- “I have too much Stress in my life”
- “Everything stresses me out”.
But what I am going to share with you might change your perspective about this … “Stress”
In human relationships, distance is not measured in miles but in affection. Two people can be right next to each other, yet miles apart.
I was researching the effects of stress on our health recently and came across a TED Talk “How to Make Stress Your Friend” by Kelly McGonigal who is a Stanford University psychologist.
In this TED Talk, psychologist Kelly McGonigal shares that according to science, learning how to view our stress response as helpful actually changes our physical response to stress. Kelly explains how stress hormones work, how we can reframe the purpose of stress, and how connecting to other people and caring for others can help increase our stress resilience. Staying healthy is not all about eliminating stress, which is good news since that’s nearly impossible. It’s about getting better at managing it.
Kelly explains that while we have all spent the last 30 years or so thinking that stress, and its physical manifestations, were unhealthy, that that’s actually not exactly the case. Over the course of her talk she discusses three studies that shed new light on the stress response, and how to reprogram our thoughts about it to make it healthier.
