Stress Can Be Good
I hope all of you are waking up well this morning. I want to thank everyone who sent comments or started conversations with me here at the gym about yesterday's gym email. It was great seeing people really engaging and wanting to expand on yesterday's topic of "Something is Better Than Nothing". Julie Fields sent me a great piece from
Dr. Kelly McGonigal's book "The UpSide of Stress" .
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From Placebo to Mindset
One way to think about Crum’s stress study is that it demonstrated a placebo effect. The positive stress video changed participants’ expectations of how stress would affect them and, like a sugar pill, produced the expected response.
The placebo effect is a powerful phenomenon, but it’s also a manipulation. Someone is telling you how to think about something. Often, they are giving you something you don’t have any preconceived notions about. They hand you a pill and say, “This will help,” so you believe them. But when it comes to stress, everyone already has a point of view. Every time you experience stress, your beliefs about it come to mind. Think about how many moments of your day you would describe as stressful. How often do you say, “This is so stressful” or “I’m so stressed”? In each of these moments, how you think about stress can alter your biochemistry and, ultimately, how you respond to whatever has triggered the stress.
A belief with this kind of power goes beyond a placebo effect. This is a mindset effect. Unlike a placebo, which tends to have a short-lived impact on a highly specific outcome, the consequences of a mindset snowball over time, increasing in influence and long-term impact.
As we’ve seen, a mindset is a belief that biases how you think, feel, and act. It’s like a filter that you see everything through. Not every belief can become a mindset. Some beliefs simply aren’t that important. You might believe that chocolate is better than vanilla, that it’s rude to ask somebody’s age, and that the world is round, not flat. Those beliefs, no matter how strongly you hold them, have relatively little consequence for how you think about your life.
The beliefs that become mindsets transcend preferences, learned facts, or intellectual opinions. They are core beliefs that reflect your philosophy of life. A mindset is usually based on a theory about how the world works. For example, that the world is getting less safe, that money will make you happy, that everything happens for a reason, or that people cannot change. All of these beliefs have the potential to shape how you interpret experiences and make decisions. When a mindset gets activated—by a memory, a situation you find yourself in, or a remark someone makes—it sets off a cascade of thoughts, emotions, and goals that shape how you respond to life. This, in turn, can influence long-term outcomes, including health, happiness, and even longevity.
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It turns out that how you think about stress is also one of those core beliefs that can affect your health, happiness, and success. As we’ll see, your stress mindset shapes everything from the emotions you feel during a stressful situation to the way you cope with stressful events. That, in turn, can determine whether you thrive under stress or end up burned out and depressed. The good news is, even if you are firmly convinced that stress is harmful, you can still cultivate a mindset that helps you thrive.
What Is Your Stress Mindset?
Psychologist Alia Crum and her colleagues developed the Stress Mindset Measure to assess people’s views of stress. Take a moment to look at the two stress mindsets below and consider which set of statements you agree with more strongly—or, at least, would have agreed with before you picked up this book:
Mindset 1: Stress Is Harmful.
Experiencing stress depletes my health and vitality.
Experiencing stress debilitates my performance and productivity.
Experiencing stress inhibits my learning and growth.
The effects of stress are negative and should be avoided.
Mindset 2: Stress Is Enhancing.
Experiencing stress enhances my performance and productivity.
Experiencing stress improves my health and vitality.
Experiencing stress facilitates my learning and growth.
The effects of stress are positive and should be utilized.
Of these two mindsets, “stress is harmful” is by far the most common. Crum and her colleagues have found that while most people can see some truth in both mindsets, they still view stress as more harmful than helpful. Men and women do not differ, and age does not predict mindset.
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Stress mindsets are powerful because they affect not just how you think but also how you act. When you view stress as harmful, it is something to be avoided. Feeling stressed becomes a signal to try to escape or reduce the stress. And indeed, people who endorse a stress-is-harmful mindset are more likely to say that they cope with stress by trying to avoid it. For example, they are more likely to:
Try to distract themselves from the cause of the stress instead of dealing with it.
Focus on getting rid of their feelings of stress instead of taking steps to address its source.
Turn to alcohol or other substances or addictions to escape the stress.
Withdraw their energy and attention from whatever relationship, role, or goal is causing the stress.
In contrast, people who believe that stress can be helpful are more likely to say that they cope with stress proactively. For example, they are more likely to:
Accept the fact that the stressful event has occurred and is real.
Plan a strategy for dealing with the source of stress.
Seek information, help, or advice.
Take steps to overcome, remove, or change the source of stress.
Try to make the best of the situation by viewing it in a more positive way or by using it as an opportunity to grow.
These different ways of dealing with stress lead to very different outcomes. When you face difficulties head-on, instead of trying to avoid or deny them, you build your resources for dealing with stressful experiences. You become more confident in your ability to handle life’s challenges. You create a strong network of social support. Problems that can be managed get taken care of, instead of spiraling out of control. Situations that you can’t control become opportunities to grow. In this way, as with many mindsets, the belief that stress is helpful becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.