Telling yourself you thrive under stress could be healthy. It’s a much better story to tell yourself, than, “This stress is killing me.”
You see…
A 1998 study found that 54% of American’s are worried about their stress level. Here’s the kicker: most people are worried about their stress level because they’ve heard that stress is bad for your health and that stress increases your odds of dying. After all, it had been shown that high levels of stress increased the risk of dying by 43%.
The problem is that those studies didn’t really tell the entire story. They were looking directly at stressful life events and mortality rates. A recent study demonstrated that the most important factor was our view about stress itself. As it turns out, stress itself is not actually bad. But, what we believe about the stress itself can be bad. The belief that stress is bad is what affects our health rather than the stress itself.
There is potentially good news in that our stress, and our ability to handle it can have a positive impact on our children.
So don’t stress about your stress level!
