How to make stress your friend | Kelly McGonigal | TED Talk

Discussion starts of with the speaker asking people the levels of stress that they are experiencing in their
day to day lives.

She is a health psychologist, her mission is to help people be happier and healthier.

She debunks that what she has been teaching for 10 years is not beneficial to people.

She has been teaching for years that stress makes people sick, from common cold to cardiovascular
disease.

Now she has changed her mind about stress and she wants you to as well.

A study tracked 30, 000 adults in the United States for eight years, and they started by asking people.

“How much stress have you experienced in the last year.

They asked these people if they believed stress was harmful to their health, then they used public death
records to find out who died

People who experienced a lot of stress in the previous year had an increased risk of dying, but that was
only true for the people that believed that stress is harmful to their health

Two types of Stress

Eustress- stress that has a positive effect on you, for example learning data structures and algorithms
first before learning java or any other programming language, helps you become a better developer

Distress- stress that affects you negatively, such as losing your job, your parents passing away, or you
being unable to play the sport that you love due to being seriously injured

People who experienced stress but did not view it as harmful were not prone to death, in fact they have
the lowest rate of death

182k Americans died prematurely believing that stress is bad for you

Over 20k deaths a year

Believing stress is bad for you will be the 15th highest cause of death in the United States

Killed more people than cancer, HIV and Homicide

The studies state that when you change your mind about stress, you can change your body’s reaction to
it.

She then tells us about a study that makes people stressed out by having them prepare for a five minute
impromptu speech with panelist designed to give them negative non verbal feedback

Then a math test that had the participant count from 996 backwards while being harassed at the same
time by the exam conductor.

This study was conducted by Harvard University

If you’re body is breathing faster, your lungs are tightening and you feel uncomfortable, that is a sign that
your body is giving more oxygen to the brain, additionally they should know that it helps their
performance.

This made them less anxious and more confident

If you view stress as helpful your blood vessels will stay relaxed

How you think about stress matters

Stress is your body helping you rise up to the challenge

Stress makes you social

Oxytocin- the cuddle hormone

Oxytocin is a neuro-hormone-it primes you to do things that strengthen close relationships.

Oxytocin makes you crave physical contact with friends and family, it makes you more willing to help and
support the people you care about.

Oxytocin is a stress hormone- it has as much as a part as the adrenaline that makes your heart pound in
stressful situations, when it is released it motivates you to seek help from someone you trust rather
than keep it bottled inside.

This stress hormone strengthens your heart

Caring created resilience, when you are stress help people out, stress response is helpful

Best way to make decisions

Go after what it is that creates meaning in your life and then trust yourself to handle the stress that
follows." That's an amazing sentence. -Lifestyle choice, stressful job or non stressful job. Chasing
meaning is better for your life than avoiding discomfort

I will become a full pledged web developer after graduation. I will try my best to get good at front-end
using React, Angular and Vue js or become a c# software engineer.