Bouncing out of bed
Welcome to Love Mondays, a weekly newsletter designed as a 3-minute hit to fire up the other 10,077 minutes of your week.
We get one life. Hitting snooze on our dreams is not an option…
When we take a step back and look at the opportunity we have to live our best lives and enrich the lives of others, we should be bouncing off the walls with enthusiasm. But instead, we often find ourselves staring at the ceiling. One of the things I find fascinating about stress is that often the worst part, is being stressed about being stressed.
As many of us love this Monday from lockdown, what is the relationship between stress and resilience? I believe resilience lies not in the first layer of stress – being time poor, resource-poor, or dealing with a difficult circumstance – but in how we decide to own that narrative and frame our choices. Feeling the victim and fuelling resentment can (literally) kill us, but aligning stress to effort can bring purpose to life.
What is the story you tell yourself about stress?
(Write it down)
Consider: how stress can be a useful motivator.
Practice: choosing your attitude.
Decide to: connect to your purpose every time you review your to-do list.
Kelly McGonigal
Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonigal suggests it’s our relationship to stress that is problematic as opposed to stress itself. Stress, she argues, gives us the opportunity to build strength. In one study she references details on how University of Wisconsin researchers tracked 30,000 American adults for eight years. They found that subjects with a lot of stress had a 43 percent increased risk of dying – but only if they believed stress was harmful. When it comes to stress, the problem is not the problem.
Don’t let stress get the best of you. Let stress bring out the best in you.