PNTV: The Upside of Stress by Kelly McGonigal (#221)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today, another great book, the Upside of stress by Kelly McGonigal. The upside of Stress Subtitle why Stress is good for you and how to get good at it. One of my favorite books of 2015, if not the best book I've read so far this year. Really good. I love Kelly McGonigal's scientific rigor and she's got a great writing style. We also featured her Willpower Instinct on the Science of Willpower and if you saw her TED Talk on stress, I'll put a link to it. Something like 7 million people have watched that at this point. You're familiar with her work. The basic idea here is that how we perceive our stress dictates how we experience that stress. Biologically, it's amazing. If we think stress is bad for us, it is bad for us. But if we think stress can be enhancing, it can be enhancing. She calls the switch and how you move from an idea that stress, a mindset that stress is harmful to a mindset that stress is enhancing. She calls that mindset interventions to move from one to the other. And her book is packed with these mindset interventions. Really cool research, fascinating applications. I'm excited to explore a handful of my favorites. Philosopher's note, bunch of big ideas, five of them here. First, one challenge response. So when you think of stress, you probably think of fight or flight response. The fight or flight response. Kelly tells us about something called the mismatch theory. Mismatch theory. The idea is that, you know, the fight or flight response was cool tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of years ago when we needed it, right? We needed to get extra blood into our arms and legs and the adrenaline spikes so we can get away from the saber toothed tiger or whatever was threatening our lives. We needed that fight or flight response in order to survive. But today in the 21st century, that fight or flight response is not matched properly. There's a mismatch, right? And something is wrong with us. If we experience a similar response in our modern lives, it's toxic, it's harmful. It's called the mismatch theory. And the reality is it's a lot more nuanced than that. And this is what McGonigal walks us through. One of the responses that's different, similar to but different from the fight or flight response is, is the challenge response. We're going to talk about that in a moment. There's also the tend and befriend response when you feel stressed and Threatened, you actually can become nicer. The tend and befriend response. Instead of feeling post traumatic stress, you can feel post traumatic growth. There are a lot of different ways to respond to stress. One of them is the challenge response. Basic idea is if you feel threatened by a challenge and, and you don't feel that you have what it takes to meet the challenge, then you're going to be in more of a fight or flight threat response. But if you think you have what it takes to step up to the challenge and you see it as a challenge and you lean into it and you go for it, you're going to have more of a challenge response. And what's fascinating is you elicit an entirely different, a similar yet distinct biological pattern when you have a challenge response. You remove fear and, and you have focus and amazing things happen to your underlying biology, the biology of courage. She describes it as. So know that there's something other than just a fight or flight response you can elicit when you feel a challenge. The challenge response. Believe you have what it takes and that will impact you significantly. Here's a really cool way to think about it. Second, big idea, I'm excited. She talks about research done by a professor at the Harvard Business School. The scenario was this. She asked this professor, asked hundreds of people. Okay, Imagine this. Imagine you're about ready to give a big talk to everyone in your company. Hundreds of people, CEO, board, right? You've been stressed about it, anxious about it for weeks, and now it's go time, time to go. Your heart rate is just increasing, your heart's pumping, your palms are sweaty, your mouth is dry, you're feeling it, right? Okay, all that energy is coming up. And she asked these people, what do you think you should do? Should you try to relax, right? And say, I am calm. Or should you try to get excited? Focus on being excited. 91% of the people she asked said you should try to get calm. If you don't calm yourself down, you're going to choke, right? And she said, I wonder if that's right. And she ran a little research study where she brought people into a lab, split them into two groups, told both of them that they're going to prepare, need to prepare to give a talk, they're going to give a speech, right? And then she told half of the group to say to themselves, I am calm. To try to get themselves calm when they feel all those nerves going. She told the other half to embrace their anxiety and rather than to say, I am calm, say I am excited. And to actually use that energy positively via excitement and to reinterpret their experience of that same exact physiological energy as positive. What happened? Well, the group that said I am excited felt more confident, more prepared, and they outperformed the other group on their performance in the speech. By a group of people that analyzed the speeches who said they looked more confident, they were more compelling, more persuasive, better speakers, etc. I am excited. Amazing idea. The next time you feel stress, whether it's giving a speech at work or asking someone out, or having a challenging conversation with someone at work or at home, and you feel that energy racing, know that you have a choice. And you can try to dampen it and get rid of it and maybe have a story in your head that something's wrong with you, that you're feeling those nerves. Or you can say, I'm just excited. I care about this. One of the key things she talks about in the book again and again and again is the fact that the only reason we feel stress is because something that we care about is going on. We care about the results of something. We care about what's happening. It has meaning to us. Researchers call that the stress paradox. The more meaning in your life you have, the more stress you have. But if you try to get rid of all of your stress, you can have a really hard time living a meaningful life. The stress paradox. So next time you're feeling any nerves, whether it's tiny or huge, think about that. Think about if you can reorient your relationship to it and say, I'm excited right now. I love that idea. One of my favorite ideas. Third big idea. Here is a research study done in the 90s with Stanford students who were on a break. It's all about their values. They were on a break study. Part of the group was asked to just keep track of things that were interesting or that went well that day or whatever. Right. Good things that happened that day. The other group was asked to identify their values, to think about what was important in their lives and then to think about what happened that day in terms of their values and to write about that good things that happened and then values and what happened and how they were related to their values. Fascinating. These students came back after X weeks and the researchers measured their overall health and well being. This group was healthier than this group. They're also more confident heading into the new semester or whatever. It was fascinating stuff. And. And the researchers looked at thousands of pages of their journal writing to understand what was it that made the difference what they found was that the group that had created a sense of what their values are and then associated the daily activities looked at little stressful events through the eyes of meaning. They weren't little annoying things. They were things that were consistent with and part of them, creating more value and more meaning in their lives. So creating meaning a huge way to intervene and create a better, more positive mindset. Think about doing that journal exercise. What's important to you, what matters to you. Literally, like pause, think about that. What matters to you, what do you value in your life? And then think about what's going on in your life and potentially the stressful things going on in your life, and think about how they relate to the things you value in your life. You might be tired at work and things just start going well, but if you value taking care of your family and being able to provide a certain level of comfort for your family, then you can actually create meaning for that thing that might have just seemed like just a really annoying, stressful thing. Or your kids. You might be parenting your kids and they might be stressed right now about that. Think about how important it is for you to be a great parent and to help your kids create a life of deep happiness and fulfillment and flourishing. If that's a deeply held value, then you can reinterpret the little annoyances that happen in the context of your meaning. It's a really powerful concept that the research has shown unequivocally can help you see the upside of stress. Fourth big idea is related. It's called the bigger than self goals exercise. Bigger than self goals. So they've done a number of research studies on this. But you can bring kids into a lab, or students into a lab or anyone into a lab and have them imagine things that are bigger than themselves. What difference do you want to make in the world? How do you want to show up? What impact do you want to make for others? And what you'll see is increased motivation, increased performance, increased persistence, etc. And too often we're just myopically focused on competing with other people and getting ahead and outperforming in this way and that way and this way and that way. But it's all about us. When we can step up and see a bigger picture. This is part of the tend and befriend response vis a vis the fight or flight. Then our challenges have a totally different meaning. We're committed to something bigger than ourselves. We have that intrinsic motivation that leads to deeper levels of motivation and fulfillment. It's a big Idea, think about what matters to you, what differences you want to make in the world and, and then translate what you're doing and the stress you experience in that context. Which leads us to the fifth big idea, your personal Everest. McGonigal talks about the fact that when she was a PhD student, she was struggling and wasn't sure if she had what it took to make it through her program. And then she was working late one night and someone was walking through or working in the office complex, might have been the custodian, I can't recall exactly, but he kind of poked his head into her office and said, just another cold, dark night on Everest. Just another cold, dark night on Everest. And that struck McGonagall powerfully where she realized, wow, that's exactly what's happening. I've chosen to climb Everest. This is another tough struggle for me tonight. And she said, imagine a climber, a mountain climber going up Everest. They're not going to complain about the fact that it's snowing again and it's really cold. God, I can't believe it. They don't complain about that. They've created a challenge in their life, a context in their life in which that stress is to be expected. Don't complain about that. You see that it's a condition of the game. If you want to climb Mount Everest, well, guess what? You're going to go through some really challenging times, but you're committed to something bigger than yourself. You, you have a deeper sense of meaning and context and you can alchemize that stress positively. It's just part of the deal. And she said we need to view our lives that way. Whether it's self selected Everests. Right. Or we might just find ourselves in circumstances that feel overwhelming. We wouldn't have chosen to have them, but here we are. It's our Everest and experience. We're just experiencing another dark, cold night on the side of Everest. So think about your big challenges in that context. We all have our own personal Everest. Let's make it meaningful. Commit to something bigger than ourselves again. Identify your values, what's important to you, and translate the stressful things you're going through within that context that will change your experience. Remember, I'm excited. The physiological response of our heart rate increasing and all the adrenaline going through our bodies is, if viewed properly, we can have a challenge response which enhances our performance. And that is exciting. So there you go. Awesome book. Barely scratched the surface of it. If you're feeling it, I highly recommend it. At the very least, watch the TED Talk. I'll have a link to that below again and hope you enjoyed. Look forward to sharing more with you soon. Have another awesome day. See you.