A Better Way to Think About Stress
By: Nir Eyal
Tags: Stress Management, Stress, Self, Mental Health, Psychology

A Better Way to Think About Stress

Illustrations: Fru Pinter

Co-authored by Todd Snyder

Let’s play a game of Would You Rather. Would you rather speak in front of 500 people for an hour or be stuck in an elevator with your ex? Would you rather get a cavity drilled or be forced to take a four-hour Zumba class? Would you rather lose your wallet on the subway or lose your internet connection right before a big online presentation?

None of these options are good, but they have something in common: Unless you’re an avid Zumba dancer, they all invoke stress.

It’s a feeling most of us dread and left unchecked, it can manifest in harmful physical and mental symptoms. But it’s time to consider an alternative view of stress. What if we stopped seeing stress as something abnormal or threatening to our health and instead thought of it as something that empowers us to be our best? Here are some mental strategies to help you do this, but first, it helps to understand exactly what we mean when we say we’re stressed.

Where does stress come from?

Stress comes from the future, but not in the Marty McFly way.

Humans are unique among animals in our capacity to predict what might happen next. Say you hear a sudden rustling sound. A zebra will run, assuming it’s a lion or other predator. But if a human hears a strange sound in their home, they’ll ponder what to do, weighing the potential costs and benefits of every option.

While imagining the future motivates us to pursue what we want, all that thinking about what might happen next — and what move to make — is stressful. It can feel paralyzing. Still, that doesn’t mean we’re destined to lives of mental strife.

You’ve probably heard the story of Viktor Frankl, the inspiring psychiatrist who survived imprisonment in a Nazi concentration camp during the Holocaust. He observed firsthand the profound difference between his fellow prisoners who lost hope — and soon died — compared with those who found a purpose. Focusing on that purpose allowed them to take back some measure of psychological control. The difference was literally life and death.

Frankl knew something that science would later verify: Perception can mediate the effects of stress. In other words, two people faced with exactly the same stressful situation can have very different physical and emotional reactions. How does that happen? To answer that question, let’s take a look at some fascinating research about the power of feeling in control.

The power of control

A classic study of two rats reveals an important insight about the role control plays in the experience of stress. The two rats are in separate cages connected to the same electrical circuit that administers random shocks through the metal floor of their cage. One rat, called the “executive rat,” has a lever in its cage that enables it to turn off the shocks, while the other, the “subordinate rat,” does not.

When the experiment begins, both the executive rat and the subordinate rat show signs of stress, indicated by a sudden surge of the stress hormone cortisol. Then, something interesting happens. The executive rat’s stress levels drop back to normal, while the subordinate rat’s stress remains high. Why? In a word, control.

Once the executive rat discovers that it can turn off the stressful stimulus (the random shocks) by pressing the lever in its cage, the physiological effects of the stressful situation essentially disappear completely. In contrast, the subordinate rat’s health steadily declines due to the stress, leading to secondary effects including a suppressed immune system.

On a psychological level, it’s the feeling of control that makes all the difference. Let’s consider why that’s the case, and what it means for our ability to cope with the daily stress we all face in the human rat race.

Psychological immunity to stress

The stress we experience is based on our perception of what’s going to happen next. If we anticipate a threatening situation, our body releases stress hormones to prepare us to face the threat.

But if we believe we have control over a threatening stimulus, then we don’t need to prepare for that threat in the same way. We don’t need to be on full alert with the fight-or-flight response gearing us up for survival.

How can we regain a sense of control when faced with stress and uncertainty? Let’s return to the story of Frankl. Faced with unimaginable hardship, he had no idea how long the torment would continue. There was no guarantee of rescue, and many of his companions died of starvation, illness, or worse. What did he do differently to cope with the stress?

He changed the focus of his attention. Frankl searched for meaning and purpose in the smallest daily actions, like caring for a friend or saving a scrap of string that might be useful later. He also found long-term meaning and purpose in the idea of survival itself. He reminded himself continuously that surviving this hardship would be meaningful to his family and friends. They needed him to come back to them alive.

This change in focus, from the many uncontrollable aspects of life to the few controllable ones, can have a profound effect. That’s because our perception of reality is, to a large extent, created by the focus of our attention.

Are you facing the stress of an uncertain future? If so, it helps to focus on what you can control. Sometimes that means bringing the finish line closer by setting goals for today or this week, instead of trying to figure out what you’ll do if you lose your job three months from now. Sometimes, it means making a list of 10 ways you can stay connected with friends and choosing the best one to put into action.

Our human tendency is to focus on threats and problems. For the sake of our emotional wellness, it makes sense to modify that automatic tendency. You can’t control the stressors that come your way, but you can influence the focus of your own attention. You can focus on the things that give you back a feeling of control.

The power of your beliefs

Want another tool to combat stress? Counterintuitively, one of the best things to add to your toolbelt is an entirely different belief about stress: befriending it instead of battling it.

In her TED talk, the psychologist Kelly McGonigal revealed an important insight that changed how she felt about stress. After decades educating people about the dangers of stress and imploring them to reduce stress for the sake of their health, McGonigal discovered an unexpected trend: When people believed stress was something bad that must be avoided, it had a far worse impact on their health. In contrast, among those who saw stress as a normal part of pursuing goals, there was no correlation between higher stress and poor health outcomes.

Once again, perception matters. If you believe stress itself is a threat, something you must reduce for the sake of your health, and yet can’t effectively reduce it, you feel trapped. You have no control, just like the rat getting shocked at random. But what if you stopped seeing stress as something abnormal or threatening to your future health and instead thought of it as something that empowers us to be our best?

For instance, speaking in front of hundreds of people can be debilitatingly stressful. Many people try to fight stage fright, thinking the stress will make them more likely to stumble over their words and embarrass themselves. However, instead of thinking the stress is a bad thing that we must resist, we can think of it as an asset. A racing heartbeat, for instance, isn’t necessarily a bad thing — it’s a sign of the body sending more oxygen to the brain so you can do your best.

After we learn to see stress as something to harness rather than run from, we can take things one step further. Let’s see what happens when you pursue stress deliberately, on your own terms.

Stress for success?

In his book, The Power of Full Engagement, the peak-performance coach Jim Loehr recommends oscillating back and forth between pushing hard and relaxing. Observing both athletes and executives, Loehr noticed that we engage more fully in our work if we work hard for periods of time and then pull back toward rest and recovery.

An athlete who knows there’s a short break around the corner is capable of pushing harder during periods of extreme exertion. And if you think about this in the context of your own life, it probably makes sense. It’s easy to push hard for the last two days of work before a vacation or even the last hour of a typical workday. That’s because you know you’re about to get a break.

When you intentionally push yourself outside of your comfort zone and schedule periods of rest and recuperation, something interesting happens: Your capacity to endure stress increases. It’s as if you’ve created a new, set point for what feels normal.

For example, an entrepreneur who feels constantly pressed for time during her nine-hour workday might experiment with doing a 14-hour workday once per week for three weeks. Each of these long workdays is followed by a shortened workday of only six hours. In this case, she is stretching her sense of what’s possible by working longer than what feels comfortable. Then she recovers, taking it easy the next day.

The effect is less stress. Can you guess why? She has expanded her sense of what’s possible. She feels in control of the stressor (time pressure to get things done) because she knows that if the worst comes to worst, she can put in a few longer workdays to get caught up. Things no longer feel out of control.

Alternatively, she can practice timeboxing, a time management tool that gives us better control over the focus of our attention when too many things are competing for our time. Timeboxing allows us to translate our highest priorities into blocks of time we’ve reserved to get the most critical things done. Once again, the result is a feeling of control.

Achieve more with less stress

You don’t have to choose between a healthy life and a life of full engagement with high, hard goals. You can have both.

The way to have both is to take control of the stress you put on yourself. By proactively seeking stress in forms that further your goals, you can change your set point for what feels overwhelming. You’re taking control of stress before it takes control of you, turning it from something that happens to you to something chosen by you.

If you want to take action on this idea, here’s what I recommend. Choose one area of life to experiment with — for example, your physical fitness, tolerance for periods of intense concentration, or handling rejection on sales calls. Apply the concept of steering toward stress and then away from it.

If done correctly, as you steer toward stress, difficult challenges will begin to feel more like an adventure. Emotionally, you’ll experience a sense of thriving and empowerment as you navigate your way toward difficult goals rather than a feeling of being crushed by their weight. Then, when you steer away from stress, you’ll experience a deeper level of relaxed contentment that contributes to your well-being, both mentally and physically.

Bottom line: Stress isn’t your enemy. It’s not even a bad thing. Stress is, in a very real way, what you make of it. You can let it control you, or you can take control of it.