Change Your Stress Mindset, Change Your Life

A couple of weeks ago I was driving to give a talk when a massive traffic jam suddenly appeared. I sat on I-95 in an absolute standstill, watching the minutes tick by — and getting increasingly nervous that I wouldn’t arrive on time.

Eventually traffic started slowly moving again, albeit in a single lane. I then passed what had clearly been a terrible accident: three firetrucks blocked most of the highway surrounding three or four badly damaged cars. And of course my concern about being late seemed very unimportant.

This example illustrates the powerful role of mindset, or thought patterns, in influencing our experience of stress. My initial thought was that being late for my talk was a terrible outcome. But this thought shifted as I recognized that experiencing a major car accident was far worse.

The power of perception

Many people think about stress as a negative and something to be avoided because it leads to poor outcomes: low test scores in children, career burnout in executives, and “choking” in athletes. This mindset increases anxiety, disrupts performance, and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

However, people who see stress as a normal part of daily life and with a positive mindset experience stress as exhilarating and invigorating, and they reap the benefits of this extra energy to respond effectively to various challenges.

As you might predict, people with this type of mindset often end up with better overall outcomes. These are the folks who do their best work under pressure and when stakes are high. This type of mindset is how elite athletes approach high-stakes competitions, such as a must-win playoff game or the Olympics.

The impact on physical health

The way we think about stress also has a major impact on physical health. People who think about stress as detrimental and debilitating show higher levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, in response to challenging situations. Over time, this physiological response can lead to bad health outcomes, including higher blood pressure and cardiovascular disease.

But it isn’t just the experience of stress that affects health — the very perception that stress affects health also has an impact! Researchers in one study asked nearly twenty-nine thousand people to rate their overall level of stress over the last year and how much they believed that stress affected their health — a little, a moderate amount, or a lot. People who reported having experienced a lot of stress and who also believed that stress had a large impact on their health were 43 percent more likely to die over the next eight years. In contrast, people who experienced a lot of stress but did not feel stress had a major impact on health were no more likely to die than those who had experienced little or moderate levels of stress.

This finding tell us that it isn’t necessarily the experience of high levels of stress that increases the risk of mortality. Instead, what’s particularly detrimental is having a high level of stress coupled with the belief that stress leads to negative health outcomes. In fact, people who believe that stress affects health “a lot or extremely” are more than twice as likely to die from a heart attack compared to those without such beliefs.

Shift your stress mindset

But here’s the good news: Regardless of your natural tendency, you can shift your stress mindset. Understanding the role of mindset in influencing how you think about stress is the first step in learning how to reframe it in a new, more positive way.

People who learn strategies for reframing stress in a more adaptive way — as energizing and inspiring, not just exhausting and debilitating — show better psychological and physical well-being. For example, college students who learn about the benefits of stress, including how stress increases arousal and thereby leads to improved academic performance, show lower levels of math anxiety and better test scores. This type of reframing reduces cardiovascular stress and its overall wear and tear on the body.

Here’s a simple example about the practical benefits of changing our stress mindset. Researchers in one study assigned employees at a large financial institution to watch one of two videos. The first group watched a stress-is-debilitating video, which described various harmful aspects of stress, including its role in poor performance at work and negative health outcomes. The second group watched a stress-is-enhancing video, which described the benefits of stress for improving creativity, productivity, and the immune system.

As the researchers predicted, people who watched the stress-is-enhancing video showed substantial benefits. They reported better work performance, as well as lower levels of anxiety and depression.

We can’t control what life throws at us, but we can all practice reframing difficult events as challenges instead of threats. And this simple shift in mindset has substantial benefits for our psychological and physical health.