Vishen Lakhiani talks about good stress: manageable challenges that build resilience, not anxiety. He shares riding a roller coaster with his 9-year-old daughter as an example of how facing fear can shrink it. The key is emotional honesty and gradual exposure, like lifting weights for your mind.
Chapters
So there's a difference between good stress and obviously overwhelm anxiety. Those are things we probably want to curb. But there is an invitation to invite good stress. So are we actually right now complacent where we're at, or are we actually growing ourselves in some way when we invite ourselves to these moments of inviting good stress? An emotional aspect of this is maybe sharing how we're actually feeling instead of denying those feelings. I'm actually feeling hurt that you said that. I'm actually feeling sad right now. I'm actually feeling jealous, and I don't know why. I'm actually feeling like I need personal time right now. So I'm not going to say yes to that. And many times this will come up in our interpersonal relationships and our interpersonal dynamics. That is a growth edge for most people. Nobody wants to shake the boat. Nobody wants to have difficult or courageous conversations because it can offend somebody else. And I don't know about you, but I was a former people pleaser for many, many years. So to build good stress in stating my boundaries or stating, actually, no, I don't want you to do that. Actually, no, I'm not gonna do that for you. That was a really big thing for me to do. And I think for a lot of people listening, nobody wants to rock the boat. Because at the end of the day, our truest desires is to be accepted, to be love, love, to fit in, to belong. And so instead we don't speak our truth yet. If we can invite some of this good stress to expose ourselves, to create a current environment that's really supportive of who we are becoming, that is actually key steps to building unshakable resiliency.
How does good stress translate to resilience?
Oh, I'm so glad you asked this question. So if we're inviting more and more incremental changes of good stress, well, we're actually building our resiliency. We are building our strength in that way. We are building our agility to grow. Just take for example, going to the gym, lifting weights. You talk about, you know, health and longevity a lot. And so. Well, let's take that for example, when we first go to the gym and we're building our muscles, we're building our biceps in the beginning, we are not going to like it, we're going to be sore. But if we actually stick to those small incremental changes where we are daily showing up and we are growing and we are committing to the intention of growing our muscles, well, guess what? By the end of the 30 days. By the end of the 60 days, you're going to see a resiliency. The heavy weights that you thought that were heavy on day one, probably on day 30, are going to be a piece of cake, hopefully. So that's what I mean by exposing yourself to the things that we are afraid of.
You're right. I like that. It reminds me of what happened just last week with my daughter. So I was with my 9 year old daughter Eve at Universal Studios in Singapore and there's a really scary roller coaster there. Now I have a slight fear of heights, so I do not do scary roller coasters. But my son, who's 15, wanted to do it because he's a brave kid. And I said, you know, I'm just going to sit back, I'm not going to do this. And my daughter said, dad, I'm going to do this. I'm like, eva, are you sure? It's super scary. She goes, yeah, but after I do this, nothing else in the park is going to make me scared. And I thought, wow, this girl is really, really, really wise. And then she held my hand and said, would you come with me? And now I can't turn to my daughter and go, no, your dad's a chicken. You have to do this by yourself. So I had to ride the roller coaster with her and honestly, it was not scary at all. I was just so in awe at this nine year old girl. But precisely what she said. If I do this, nothing else here in this park is going to scare me. And that reminds me of what you're talking about. Good stress, good. Taking those steps to do things that we fear that make us uncomfortable because it only makes us stronger.
