My interview with author Dr. Kelly McGonigal is about the upside of stress and how to harness it. People who reported high levels of stress but did not view it as harmful had the lowest risk of death of anyone in the study. It wasn’t stress that was killing people, but the combination of stress and the belief that it is harmful. Do you have a toxic relationship with stress? When stress feels against your will and out of your control, if it’s completely devoid of meaning, and if it isolates you from others. How can girls experience a shift in their stress mindset? The more you try to avoid and resist the suffering, the worse it gets. The more you mindfully accept the anxiety, the suffering, the stress and take action anyway, the more it improves your well-being. It takes shifting your stress mindset. The most important factor in determining your response to pressure is how you think about your ability to handle it; you’re more likely to have a challenging response if you focus on your resources.
Most effective strategies for this are acknowledging your strengths, thinking about how you have prepared for a particular challenge, remembering times in the past when you overcame similar challenges, imagining the support of your loved ones, and praying or knowing that others are praying for you, mantras, these are all quick mindset shifts that can turn a threat into a challenge. Dr. McGonigal discusses the benefits of writing and self-compassion in understanding and handling stress.
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