How to make stress your friend by Kelly McGonigal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcGyVTAoXEU
We all get stressed sometimes- okay, let’s be real here... We get stressed a lot, especially during exam season… And all our lives, we believed stress to be the ultimate enemy, but health psychologist, Kelly McGonigal, proved us all wrong in her TED talk, How to make stress your friend. If you follow this simple step, your heart rate in times of stress may even resemble the state it’s in during moments of joy!
When you’re stressed, your heart pounds faster and you might even break into a sweat. We usually view these effects as signs that we’re not coping well with all that pressure. Kelly changed our perspective about stress by debunking a few myths. For starters, she recommends thinking about it differently: rather than seeing all these changes as symptoms of a negative feeling, you could think of it as your body’s way of telling you that it’s getting energized. Kelly points out that if your heart starts to pound fast, it is just preparing you for action- and if your breathing speeds up, it’s just getting more oxygen to your brain so that you can think things through more efficiently.
You can benefit from this shift in perspective. By following this, you’re encouraging your body with a statement like “you can do this”, and you gain more confidence in yourself. This, of course, is a great outcome. Another significant benefit is that- believe it or not- stress makes you social. Oxytocin is a stress hormone which is released when you really want to tell someone you’re struggling. This makes us realise that we don’t have to face our life challenges alone and that we can talk about our problems, which is why training yourself to correctly view and manage is a good habit to adopt to daily, personal life.
This TED talk comes in very handy when you are stressed about anything- from homework to exams, or any other reason you could be stressed. It keeps our motivation levels a little higher now that we know that stress isn’t such a bad thing after all. In fact, it is a good thing if you respond to it in a good way. All of the things Kelly McGonigal has talked about prove to us that it’s okay to be stressed and that it’s okay if you think you’re having some form of anxiety because- really, your body is just preparing you to meet this new challenge you’re being faced with. When you go through stressful times, choose to connect with others, choose to view your stress response as helpful and you’ll build resilience and teach your body the biology of courage.
