As a follow up to the post on the value of stress, I wanted to share a TED Talk that may change your perspective on the stressful situations you face.
Link to video: How To Make Stress Your Friend, by Kelly McGonigal
In this talk, Kelly McGonigal shares some recent research that shows the way we look at stress may be even more important than the stress itself. In one study, the researchers found that those who had large amounts of stress did indeed have a significantly higher mortality rate, but — and this is important — only if they believed that stress was bad for them.
But surprisingly, those in the study who had the same high levels of stress but didn’t think it was harmful, ended up having the lowest mortality risk of any of those studied. In other words, believing that stress was bad for you actually had more of an impact than actually having stress. In fact, the body’s physiological response to stress is significantly affected by how we view it.
After her talk, when asked a question about making career decisions based on the level of stress involved,McGonigal remarked that it’s been demonstrated that chasing meaning is better for your health than trying to avoid discomfort. And this is something worth giving consideration. Because if we’re pursing things that are meaningful and important to us, and there’s some stress involved, we will be far better off than if we end up settling for a low-stress life that’s devoid of meaning.
This doesn’t mean that we should be chasing stress as an end in itself. But it does mean that fearing it can in some ways do more harm than good