Stress: it’s something that is unavoidable in daily life, with countless articles and books written on how to manage it. However, while long-term stress can be damaging, short-term stress is an essential part of life. Every successful man in history, from Sir Isaac Newton to Steve Jobs, faced stressful situations with uncertain outcomes – and it’s what made them admirable.
Moreover, as much as stress is vilified in our culture, the truth is that we actually like it. Most of our leisure activities, from skiing and mountain biking to watching sports and playing video games, involve exposing ourselves to controlled, short-term forms of stress. For the most part, short-term stress can be fun, and even good for you.
In fact, studies have shown that people who exhibit a robust short-term stress response, such as a pounding heart or rapid breathing, recover better after surgery or vaccination and may respond more effectively to cancer treatment.
Exercise and stress response
Both exercise and sex stimulate a hormonal response similar to what happens when you experience short-term stress. So, the key to conquering the harmful kind of stress – the chronic kind that keeps us up at night, prevents us from enjoying life, and gnaws at our gut when trying to relax – is not to avoid it altogether, but to reframe how you think about it.
The ability to make it through stress successfully may hinge on how you perceive stress itself. An eight-year study of 30,000 adults of various ages found that those who experienced high stress and viewed stressful situations as harmful had a 43% higher risk of dying compared to others in the study. However, individuals who experienced high stress but didn’t consider stress harmful had a much lower chance of dying – even lower than those who faced relatively little stress.
Changing our beliefs about stress
This points to the possibility that our beliefs about stress relief and the dangers of stress are misguided. It may not be stress itself causing problems, but our belief that stress is inherently bad.
A second study lends support to this new perspective. Two groups of adults were exposed to stressful situations: one group faced these situations cold, whereas the second was told beforehand that the body’s stress response was beneficial in high-pressure situations, as it helped them tackle challenges.
Both groups experienced the symptoms associated with stress, such as a pounding heart and shortness of breath. However, the cardiovascular responses were markedly different. The “stress is good” group exhibited a physiological response similar to what we experience in moments of joy or courage. Over many years, this difference in stress responses can make a crucial impact on lifespan and overall health.
Embrace stress as a helpful response
So, in addition to finding ways to avoid chronic stress, simply thinking of your short-term stress response as your body’s way of helping you rise to the demands of a challenging situation can mitigate the damage stress can cause. Remind yourself of this whenever you feel stressed, and you may even thank your body for its efforts to protect you and help you perform at your best. The outward signs of stress may still be there, but maintaining this mindset will likely make you healthier on the inside.
