Do you believe stress is bad for your health?
I did, as most of us probably do. But if you are also one of those who believe exactly that then this talk may actually help save your life.
Now I know that may sound a bit melodramatic but, in her talk at TED 2013, Kelly McGonigal describes a study which tracked 30,000 US adults over 8 years.
Researchers asked them who had experienced a lot of stress over the preceding year. They also asked subjects if they believed that stress was harmful to their health.
Using public records to track which of the subjects had died, they discovered that those who said they experienced a lot of stress had a 43% higher risk of dying but that was only the case for those who also believed that stress was bad.
People who had experienced a lot of stress but who did not believe that stress was bad for them had the lowest risk of death of all the subjects, including those who experienced little stress.
This led researchers to the belief that the belief that stress is bad is actually worse for you than the stress itself.
Now I felt it was important to get that across in my summary here in case you don’t have time to watch the video.
It turns out that stress is good for you in many ways. I strongly encourage you to watch the video to find out why.
It could save your life.
Original Source: Psychologist Kelly McGonigal TED Talks Edinburgh, Scotland.
