TED
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2016–2020
14:29 · 18M views · Sep 4, 2013
Psychologist Kelly McGonigal argues in this TED talk that stress is harmful mainly if you believe it is, and that reaching out to others is an underrated way to reduce its effects.
HN mentions it when discussing how believing stress is harmful affects health and anxiety.
3 comments from Hacker News
There is a TED talk titled "How to make stress your friend" [1]. It quotes several studies that indicate those who believe their stress response is helpful for them (it is the body gearing up for an important challenge, etc.) have significantly lower risk of a stress-induced medical problem, perhaps even as low as those who had minimal stress levels. The talk also mentions a study that found those who spend time helping others also received similar benefits. I'd love to learn more about these ideas and the extent to which it is true. It definitely make some sense to me, but I still have a bit of skepticism. Anecdotally, I did feel less anxious than usual in the days after I first watched the video. [1] this video
Interestingly it's probably not actually stress that is killing you, it's how you handle stress. There was a really popular TED talk about it-- people who were stressed but didn't view it as a bad thing were still fine health wise. It was people who were stressed and also believed that was a bad thing that suffered. How to make stress your friend | Kelly McGonigal: this video
The related article in the sidebar is moderately insightful: [LINK] I've been working to overcome burnout that took me out of the game a year ago. What it basically came down to is that midlife crisis feelings had come to dominate my psyche. I found myself asking "what's the point?" about basic tasks that must be done. The start of a cure turned out to be separating a task into writing the todo list for it and then doing it afterwards. The next evolution of that is to also separate your evaluation of the work from the work itself, so that you don't wallow in critical feelings as you work. Try to be zenful and just concentrate on the now. Basically it all comes down to anxiety management. So for example, say you are cleaning and you get a text message to deal with an issue. I normally would make a mental note to remember to do it, since I lean towards intellectual pursuits. But it's better to add the item to the top of your todo list and stop thinking about it or the fear of forgetting it. Better yet, pause cleaning (since it's low-priority) and deal with the issue immediately. I've found that mechanizing the thought processes that I had taken for granted until they failed me boosted my mood. If you think of it as a scale from 0 to 10, our default with stress is to hover below a 5 (say 3). It takes effort to get above 5. But there is a stable orbit around 7 if you can maintain it for a few weeks. I think this is why people with a positive disposition have so much difficulty un