Kelly McGonigal, a health psychologist of Stanford, made an important confession in this presentation. She has taught for the last ten years that stress makes you sick. It looks like common sense, and there are various stress check questions on internet and management programs are offered. Stress increases the risk of various diseases. But she said she changed her mind.   Why should she have changed her mind about stress?

According to the study done by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, high amounts of stress and the perception that stress impacts health are each associated with poor health and mental health. In other words, not stress itself, the combination of stress and the perception is the problem. Even you have stress but do not feel the stress is bad, you do not have a bad effect of stress. Furthermore, if you think that stress is good for you, you will appreciate good effects from stress. Stress makes you stronger and social.

It’s “mindset” matter. If you can change your mindset, you can change your physiological responses. We should get better at stress.

How can we get better at stress?  I think that you should change the mindset about stress. To change it, we need an “intervention” or training to make it a habit. I recommend one method in the previous post, “5S on your mind”. Don’t be afraid of stress so much. Let’s use it to make you happier.