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How to Meditate: Meditation 101 for Beginners
10 Science-Backed Benefits of Meditation
What is Meditation?
How to Meditate: Meditation 101 for Beginners
10 Science-Backed Benefits of Meditation
What is Meditation?
Benefits of Mindfulness: Mindful Living Can Change Your Life
Mindfulness 101: A Beginner's Guide
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Hey!
Welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness.
Over the last number of days, we've been
exploring lots of different strategies to
work with stress, to be in relationship
to stress, to redirect our attention
away from it, to drop into our bodies.
Today, we're going to
explore something different.
How to transform stress into power?
And, I'm pulling some ideas from
Kelly McGonigal's work, who teaches at
Stanford, wrote the book, The Upside
of Stress, because I think some of her
researching work is groundbreaking.
So one of the studies she talks
about is, one that tracked 30
adults in the US, for a, 30,000
adults in the US for eight years.
And they asked those people,
how much stress have you
experienced in the last year?
They also asked, do you believe
stress is harmful for your health?
Then, they looked at the public
death records to see who died
eight years later or beyond.
Now, people who experienced a lot
of stress in the previous year
had a 43% increased risk of dying,
which might not be that surprising.
But, that was only true for
people who believe that stress
was harmful for their health.
The people who experienced a lot of
stress, but did not view stress as
harmful were no more likely to die.
The researchers estimated that over
those eight years, about 182,000 people
in the US died, not from stress, but
the belief that stress is bad for you.
Hmm.
So notice how that lands for you.
For me, the first time I, I heard this, it
was radical and I immediately started to
assess what is my relationship to stress.
I think the message that we're
fed from a very early age is
that, stress is not good for us.
It's killing us.
It's hard a fall.
And it's true too, that if we're
constantly living in stress and
our body is always tense, that
is going to have an effect.
But when it comes to a lot of the
different stressors that, kind of help
us achieve our goals or come with just
the daily struggles of life, we can
shift our relationship to that stress
in a way that actually shifts how
the stress manifests in our body and
whether it leads to health or disease.
So my encouragement to you today and
over the course of this series and beyond
is to explore what actually is your
mindset around stress when it arises?
Yes, we've worked with making space
for it, shifting our attention
away from it, dropping it into the
body, always to help soften stress.
But what would it be like to actually
view the stress when it arises as a
source of power, to see that this is
your body, equipping you, getting you
engaged to take on the chair and of
the day, to meet the task at hand.
That's a very different perspective
than this stress is hurting me
or harmful or getting in the
way of what I'm trying to do.
We want to take a balanced approach
because, we don't always want to
be in that stressed out state.
But I do think there are a lot of
circumstances, such as maybe before
an athletic event, a talk, or even
coming home after a long day of work
and navigating needs with our family.
To see that stress arise and say,
actually, this is serving me to
help me meet the challenge at hand,
to rise up and to be my best self.
So try that out today.
See how that perspective impacts
the experience of stress.
At least the research shows,
it's definitely a much better
mindset to take with you.
We'll explore some more
of this in the meditation.
As always, thank you for your practice.
I'll talk to you soon and take care.
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