The Lesson: Stress. It makes your heart pound, your breathing quicken and your forehead sweat. But while stress has been made into a public health enemy, new research suggests that stress may only be bad for you if you believe that to be the case

Notable Excerpt: “Your heart might be pounding, you might be breathing faster, perhaps breaking out into a sweat – and normally, we interpret these physical changes as anxiety or signs that we aren’t coping very well with the pressure, but what if you viewed them instead as signs that your body was energized and preparing for you to meet these challenges?”

The Speaker: Kelly McGonigal is a health psychologist who specializes in “science-help” – a kind of self-help guidance that is backed by science. Out of all of her pragmatic talks on self-compassion and willpower, her most notable lecture is her TEDx talk How to Make Stress Your Friend, which has garnered almost 5.5 million views.

Books: Mcgonigal is the author of “The Will Power Instinct” and “The Upside of Stress: Why Stress is Good For You”. She has also published the audiobooks “The Science of Compassion” and “The Neuroscience of Change”.

(LISTEN to the fascinating talk below) – Photo by spaceodissey, CC

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