How to
Turn Stress into a Good Thing
Stress
has a bad reputation, but that doesn't mean you can't become friends.
Stress has got a bad
reputation. A quick search for the term “stress” online, and I find the first
five websites are about reducing stress and dealing with anxiety and depression.
Magazines are full of tips for reducing stress. And the popular term mindfulness in part came from Jon Kabat-Zinn’s pioneering program called
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction.
But
is stress really that bad? If you watch the talk by Health Psychologist Kelly McGonigal
on TED, you may be pleasantly surprised. She highlighted a huge piece of research at University of Wisconsin-Madison that
shocked many people. The research on 29,000 people over 8 years discovered that
your view of stress impacts your health far more than the stress itself.
The research found
that if you think of stress is always bad for you, then your prediction will
come true. But, if you think stress is a good thing—it energizes you,
challenges you and gets you moving—you’re also correct. People with a positive
view of stress lived many years longer than those with a negative view of
stress—an amazing fact.
So stress itself isn’t
so bad after all. Part of the reason I titled my book, The Mindful Way through Stress, was to emphasize that it’s about discovering how
to move within the feeling and experience of stress effectively, rather than
just reducing stress.
Short-term stress can, in fact, boost your immune system, make you more social, improve learning—and it may improve memory.
But here’s an
important point. We’re talking about short-term stress. Chronic stress isn’t such a good thing. Exercise is good for your body, as long
as you’re not exercising all day, every day. So a bit of stress is fine from
time to time, as long as you know how to let go of that stress. Mindfulness
meditation is one excellent way to achieve that.
Mindfulness can help
you to spot not only when your stress level is rising, but what your personal
reaction to that stress is. Imagine you have an interview coming up. Do you
think, “I love this feeling. I feel so energized and pumped up to do this
interview!” Or do you think, “Oh no, I’m so stressed! I need to meditate away
this feeling as soon as possible.”
The Upside of Stress
Hans Selye, the
renowned researcher who discovered the dangers of the stress response, later
coined the terms eustress and distress. He was keen to emphasize that all
stress is not bad. Eustress is a positive experience, the stress you feel when
you’re having fun on a roller-coaster, or down a ski slope. Or even in an
interview for that matter. And distress arises when you tell yourself you don’t
like the feeling and experience that you’re having.
Here’s a simple, short
exercise to help you to re-frame your stress next time your heart begins to
race. Give it a go now if you have time, and again when you feel your stress
levels rising:
1. Find a place to comfortable sit or lie down,
and close your eyes if you can.
2. Spend the first minute being aware of your
body and getting comfortable. As time passes, you’ll notice more body parts
that are tense and begin to relax them as far as you can.
3. Notice the physiology of the stress response
in your body. Your heart racing, the tingling in your stomach and/or fingers.
Any tension in your body.
4. Say to yourself There is a positive side to
stress. Stress can be energizing and uplifting. In the short term, stress can
boost my immune system, improve performance and optimize learning. Combine this
with a little smile on your face.
This combination of
mental reframing with a little smile on your face will help to start changing
the feeling of stress to be a more positive experience.
Hopefully, you don’t
feel a failure for feeling stressed—stress is a natural feeling to have from
time to time. Discover not just how to reduce stress, but how to reframe that
very human experience.
By Shamash Alidina
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_to_turn_stress_into_a_good_thing?utm_source=GGSC+Newsletter+-+May+2015&utm_campaign=GG+Newsletter+-+May+2015&utm_medium=email
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