The Upside of Stress: Why Stress Is Good for You, and How to Get Good at It

by Kelly McGonigal

The latest science reveals that stress can make you smarter, stronger, and more successful. It helps you learn and grow. It can even inspire courage and compassion.

These mindset resets can alter your physical stress response, change your attitude, and motivate action. In other words, they transform the effect that stress is having on you in the very moment you are feeling stressed.

Stress is what arises when something you care about is at stake. This definition is big enough to hold both the frustration over traffic and the grief over a loss. It includes your thoughts, emotions, and physical reactions when you’re feeling stressed, as well as how you choose to cope with situations you’d describe as stressful. This definition also highlights an important truth about stress: Stress and meaning are inextricably linked.

You don’t stress out about things you don’t care about, and you can’t create a meaningful life without experiencing some stress.

I believe it is because embracing stress changes how you think about yourself and what you can handle.

How you think about something can transform its effect on you.

the effect you expect is the effect you get.

The beliefs that become mindsets transcend preferences, learned facts, or intellectual opinions. They are core beliefs that reflect your philosophy of life.

“People who have a positive view of stress are happier and healthier because they aren’t actually stressed.