Member-only story
Reframe Stress as a Source Of Energy
Plus 1 hardwired technique to put a brake on the acute stress response in real-time, wherever you are.
Stress has gotten a bad rep over the years.
In this TED Talk, renowned health psychologist Kelly McGonigal admits to unfairly demonizing stress.
And in almost every article on stress, you’ll read a variation of this:
The stress response is this carryover from our prehistoric days when we were chased by wild animals, and we relied on the stress response to keep us alive. Our environments have changed, but our primitive brain hasn’t caught up. So we respond to an angry e-mail the same way we used to respond to a tiger jumping at us. Stress is an unfortunate reaction; something we no longer need in modern society, where we don’t need to fear for our lives on a daily basis.
It’s not wrong, but it misses an important point:
Stress is not the enemy.
It’s possible to take what would usually be considered negative, corrosive tension and transform it into something positive and energizing.
In this post, I’ll present a defense case for Stress.
We’ll also look at the underlying mechanism to help us understand what’s…
