How to Make Stress Your Friend | Kelly McGonigal | TED
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN mentions it when discussing how believing stress is harmful affects health and anxiety.
What it is
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.
Recommended by 2 HN commenters across 2 different months, 2016 to 2020.
What Hacker News said
Recommends Jemmeh · 2016-10 · on “Can Happiness Make You Healthier?”
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]
Recommends dwaltrip · 2019-11 · on “Risk of Acute MI After the Death of a Significant Person in One's Life (2012)”
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
Cites zackmorris · 2020-02 · on “How to reduce 'attention residue'”
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