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.