Meaningful Stress

“Over the last ten years I’ve turned stress into the enemy, but I’ve changed my mind about stress. I ran across a study that made me rethink my whole approach to stress.” 

-Kelly McGonigal

Meaningful Stress

I’m having another sleepless night.  My mind is racing.  There is so much to worry about!  Then, I add one more worry to my list.  “If I don’t get some sleep tonight I’ll never be able to get everything done tomorrow.”  I toss and turn my way through the night.

Have you ever had the same or another stress related experience?  Has it impacted your mental and physical health?  I look in the mirror and see the results of stress over my entire body.  I even got to the point not long ago where I was ready to yield.  “I’ve lost the war!”  I said to myself.

That was before I ran in to Kelly McGonigal, a health psychologist teaching at Stanford University and specializing in the mind-body connection.

“You just need to change the way you think about stress.”  She taught me.  “Rather than focus on what damage stress is doing, focus on the good things it does for your body.  Think, ‘my body is helping me rise to this challenge’.”

She went on to explain the biology of stress and how the body creates a hormone that makes us seek social interaction by motivating us to seek support.  “Tell someone how you feel rather than bottling it up. Notice when others around you are struggling.  Surround yourself with people who care about you.  The built in mechanism for stress resilience is human connection.”

Kelly went on to tell me that every major life stress experience increases the risk of dying by 30%.  “But this isn’t true for everyone, people who spent time caring for others showed absolutely no stress-related increase in dying.  Caring created physical and mental resilience.”

So the good news is that the harmful results from stress on health are not inevitable.  How we think and how we act can transform our experience of stress.  When we choose to view our stress response as helpful, we create the biology of courage.  And when we choose to connect with others under stress we can create resilience.

Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t necessarily ask for more stressful experiences in my life, but the science has given me a whole new appreciation for stress.  Stress gives us access to our hearts. 

Kelly says, “The compassionate heart finds joy and meaning in connecting with others and yes your pounding physical heart works hard to give you strength and energy.  When you choose to view stress in this way, your not just getting better at stress, you’re actually making a pretty profound statement.  Your saying that you can trust yourself to handle life’s challenges and you’re remembering that you don’t have to face them alone.  So, go after what it is that creates meaning in your life and then trust yourself to handle the stress that follows.”