The key ideas

The Upside of Stress

Kelly McGonigal, 2015

What if the harm comes from believing stress is harmful, rather than from stress itself? Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonigal taught people to fear stress for years, then reconsidered her view. Here are the experiments that changed her mind and the practices she offers: turning nervousness into energy, drawing support from people, and finding meaning in a difficult period.

Who it is for

For anyone living with constant tension who is tired of hearing that stress destroys health. And for anyone who wants to learn to draw on nervousness instead of fighting it.

You do not worry about things you do not care about. And it is impossible to live a meaningful life entirely without stress.

The advice the author abandoned

Before an important conversation, your heart pounds, your palms are wet, and one thought fills your head: I need to calm down immediately or I will ruin everything. For years we have been told that stress destroys health. Every bout of nervousness starts to seem like a little harm you are inflicting on yourself.

Kelly McGonigal, a Stanford psychologist, said the same thing for many years. She taught students and readers to fight stress like a disease. Then she encountered a study with an uncomfortable conclusion: stress was most strongly associated with early death among people who believed it was harmful. At first she did not believe it and set out to investigate. That investigation led to a TED talk in 2013 and a book published in 2015.

The book’s central idea sounds bold. You do not necessarily have to reduce stress to zero: what you think about it matters too. If you consider it an enemy, your body prepares for defeat. If you see it as a resource, the same response helps you focus, reach out to people, and learn something.

This is no promise that tension will become pleasant. Next, you will see which experiments support the idea, where its limits lie, and what McGonigal suggests doing when nervousness has already arrived.

The thought of stress proved more dangerous than stress

In 1998, almost thirty thousand American adults were asked two questions. How much stress had you experienced in the past year? And did you believe stress harmed health? Eight years later, researchers checked government records to see which participants had died.

High stress was associated with a 43 percent increase in the risk of early death. But only among people who believed it was harmful. People with equally high stress but without that belief had the lowest death rate in the study, lower even than those with almost no stress.

An honest qualification is needed here. This was an observational study, not an experiment, and an association does not prove causation. Perhaps people whose health had already been undermined by stress had themselves concluded that it was harmful. McGonigal understands this, so she goes on to seek experiments where people’s views were changed deliberately.

Psychologist Alia Crum conducted one such experiment. Participants received a milkshake twice. On one occasion, it was described as a rich, indulgent 620-calorie treat; on the other, as a light 140-calorie drink. In reality, it was the same 380-calorie shake both times. After the “treat,” levels of ghrelin, the hunger hormone, fell much more sharply than after the “light” drink. The body responded to what the person thought about the food as well as to what they drank.

McGonigal has a word for beliefs like these: mindset, a deep understanding of how the world works. A mindset resembles glasses you do not notice until you take them off. Through it, you decide what a racing pulse, a sleepless night before an exam, or a difficult week means.

This leads to the book’s first step: notice your mindset.

• Complete the sentence. “Stress means...” The first thing that comes to mind is your view.

• Remember the source. Where did this idea come from: articles, your parents, a training session at work?

• Notice what you do. When nervous, do you get down to work or distract yourself and put things off?

A common mistake is deciding you can now ignore stress. The author is talking about seeing difficulties differently, rather than denying them.

Read in Livria

About the author

Kelly McGonigal works as a psychologist and teaches at Stanford University. She wrote The Willpower Instinct and gave one of the most popular TED talks about stress.

All books by this author: Kelly McGonigal

Terms from the book

  • Stanford
  • Cortisol
  • TED
  • Oxytocin
  • Taylor
  • Gallup
  • Crum: Alia Crum, an American psychologist who worked at Yale and later headed a laboratory at Stanford. She studies how mindsets affect health.
  • Ghrelin: A hormone produced mainly in the stomach that increases hunger. Its level usually falls after a meal.
  • Mindset: A deep belief about how the world works that influences perceptions, decisions, and actions. The Russian retelling uses the word ustanovka for the English term mindset.
  • UBS: A large Swiss bank. Its employees participated in Alia Crum’s experiment during the financial crisis in 2008.
  • DHEA: Dehydroepiandrosterone, an adrenal hormone. The book describes it as a stress hormone that helps the brain learn from difficult experiences and supports recovery.
  • Growth index: The ratio of DHEA to cortisol during stress. According to findings McGonigal cites, a high index is associated with greater resilience in the face of difficulties.
  • Mindset reset: A name from the book, not a scientific term: three steps the author proposes for changing your view of stress in the moment. Acknowledge it, accept it as a sign that something important is at stake, and use its energy.
  • Threat response: A response to stress in which a person expects defeat or harm. Blood vessels constrict, and the body prepares for injury.
  • Challenge response: A response to stress in which a person believes they can cope. The heart beats hard, but blood vessels remain relaxed and energy goes into action.
  • Jamieson: Jeremy Jamieson, an American psychologist who worked at Harvard and later at the University of Rochester. He studies how reinterpreting nervousness affects the body and performance.
  • Buffalo: A city in New York State, home to the University at Buffalo. Michael Poulin, one of the authors of a study on helping others and stress, worked there.
  • Tend and befriend: A response to stress in which a person feels drawn to protect loved ones and seek support. The original English term is tend and befriend.
  • Stress paradox: An expression from the book, not a scientific term: in countries where people report high stress more often, they are more satisfied with life on average.
  • Seery: Mark Seery, an American psychologist at the University at Buffalo. He showed that moderate experience of adversity is associated with better well-being than either none or too much.

All terms

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