1: Do people who have a positive attitude about aging live longer?

The short answer?  

Yes.  More than seven years longer, according to researchers at Yale University who followed middle-aged adults for twenty years.

“Those who had a positive view of aging in midlife lived an average of 7.6 years longer than those who had a negative view,” writes Kelly McGonigal in her terrific book The Upside of Stress.  

“To … continue reading

Yesterday, we looked at the powerful benefits of writing about our values.  Let’s put this theory into action.  

When?  Right now.  This will take no longer than 12 minutes.

Step one: What are your values?  Click on this link and pick your top three values.  Values are simply what you care about.  Your values are what you feel is important and meaningful.  They can be an attitude, a strength, or … continue reading

Back in the 1990s a group of Stanford students agreed to keep journals over the winter break.  

“Some were asked to write about their most important values, and how the day’s activities related to those values,” writes Kelly McGonigol in The Upside of Stress.  “Others were asked to write about the good things that happened to them.” 

Yesterday, we explored how our mindset drives our behavior.  Our mindsets are … continue reading

1: Scientist Alia Crum has an unusual track record of high-profile findings.

“By changing how people think about an experience, she can change what’s happening in their bodies,” Kelly McGonigal observes in The Upside of Stress.  “Her work gets attention because it shows that our physical reality is more subjective than we believe.” 

What is the single idea that motivates Alia’s research?

How we think about something can transform … continue reading

1: What we’ve taught about stress is wrong, Kelly McGonigal argues in her terrific book The Upside of Stress.  Despite what we’ve been taught and told, the latest science shows stress by itself is not harmful.  However, believing stress is harmful to our health is toxic. 

So, how do we transform our view of stress?  Are there actions we can take when we feel overwhelmed to direct our stress?

The … continue reading

1: It was 2008.  The economy was in free fall.  

“The financial industry is a notoriously stressful place to work,” Kelly McGonigal writes in The Upside of Stress.  “One study found that within ten years of entering the industry, 100 percent of investment bankers developed at least one condition associated with burnout, such as insomnia, alcoholism, or depression.”

The 2008 economic collapse ratcheted up the pressure: “Financial workers reported … continue reading

One of our challenges with stress is understanding exactly what it is.

We use the term stress both to describe a traffic delay and a death in the family. 

We say we are stressed when we feel busy, frustrated, anxious, or under pressure.  We might find ourselves “getting stressed out by email, politics, the news, the weather, or our growing to-do list,” Kelly McGonigal writes in The Upside of Stress… continue reading

In 1936, the Hungarian endocrinologist Hans Selye injected rats with a hormone from cow’s ovaries. Things did not go well.  The lab rats developed bleeding ulcers.  

Next, Hans injected the rats with a salt solution and a hormone isolated from a cow’s placenta. The rats developed the same symptoms.  Next up was an injection made from kidneys and spleens, Kelly McGonigal writes in her book The Upside of Stress.  

Same … continue reading

Are we approaching life with zest or avoiding it? Is our real goal hoping to avoid challenge and failure? Put another way: do we see obstacles as threats or as challenges to get better?

This week we’re looking at some of the lessons from Brian Johnson’s Optimize course. The big idea for today is: happy people are open to life’s experiences. Brian encourages us to adopt a playful attitude towards … continue reading