WEBVTT

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(Applause)

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I have a confession to make,

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But first, I want you to make
a little confession to me.

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In the past year, 
I want you to just raise your hand

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if you've experienced relatively
little stress. Anyone?

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How about a moderate amount of stress?

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Who has experienced a lot of stress? 
Yeah. Me too.

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But that is not my confession.

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My confession is this:
I am a health psychologist,

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and my mission is to help people
be happier and healthier.

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But I fear that something 
I've been teaching for the last 10 years

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is doing more harm than good,
and it has to do with stress.

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For years I've been telling people, 
stress makes you sick.

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It increases the risk of everything from 
the common cold to cardiovascular disease.

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Basically, I've turned stress
into the enemy.

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But I have changed my mind about stress,
and today,

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I want to change yours.

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Let me start with the study that made me 
rethink my whole approach to stress.

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This study tracked 30,000 adults
in the United States for eight years,

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and they started by asking people,

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"How much stress have you 
experienced in the last year?"

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They also asked,

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"Do you believe that stress 
is harmful for your health?"

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And then they used public death records
to find out who died.

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(Laughter)

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Okay. Some bad news first.

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People who experienced 
a lot of stress in the previous year

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had a 43 percent increased risk of dying.

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But that was only true for the people

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who also believed that stress
is harmful for your health.

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(Laughter)

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People who experienced a lot of stress

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but did not view stress as harmful 
were no more likely to die.

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In fact, they had the lowest risk
of dying of anyone in the study,

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including people who had 
relatively little stress.

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Now the researchers estimated that over 
the eight years they were tracking deaths,

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182,000 Americans died prematurely, 
not from stress,

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but from the belief that stress
is bad for you.

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(Laughter)

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That is over 20,000 deaths a year.

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Now, if that estimate is correct,

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that would make believing stress is bad 
for you the 15th largest cause of death

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in the United States last year,

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killing more people than skin cancer, 
HIV/AIDS and homicide.

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(Laughter)

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You can see why this study freaked me out.

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Here I've been spending so much energy 
telling people stress is bad

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for your health.

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So this study got me wondering:

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Can changing how you think about stress 
make you healthier?

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And here the science says yes.

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When you change your mind about stress, 
you can change

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your body's response to stress.

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Now to explain how this works,
I want you all to pretend

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that you are participants
in a study designed to stress you out.

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It's called the social stress test.

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You come into the laboratory,

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and you're told you have to give
a five-minute impromptu speech

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on your personal weaknesses
to a panel of expert evaluators

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sitting right in front of you, 
and to make sure you feel the pressure,

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there are bright lights and 
a camera in your face, kind of like this.

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And the evaluators have been trained
to give you discouraging,

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non-verbal feedback like this. 
(Laughter)

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Now that you're sufficiently demoralized, 
time for part two: a math test.

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And unbeknownst to you, the experimenter
has been trained to harass you during it.

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Now we're going to all do this together.
It's going to be fun. For me.

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Okay. I want you all to count backwards
from 996 in increments of seven.

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You're going to do this out loud 
as fast as you can, starting with 996. Go!

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Audience: (Counting)

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Go faster. Faster please. You're 
going too slow. Stop. Stop, stop, stop.

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That guy made a mistake. We 
are going to have to start all over again.

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(Laughter)

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You're not very good at this, are you? 
Okay, so you get the idea.

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Now, if you were actually in this study, 
you'd probably be a little stressed out.

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Your heart might be pounding, 
you might be breathing faster,

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maybe breaking out into a sweat.

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And normally, 
we interpret these physical changes

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as anxiety or signs that we aren't 
coping very well with the pressure.

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But what if you viewed them instead 
as signs that your body was energized,

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was preparing you to meet this challenge?

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Now that is exactly what participants 
were told in a study conducted

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at Harvard University. Before 
they went through the social stress test,

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they were taught to rethink 
their stress response as helpful.

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That pounding heart 
is preparing you for action.

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If you're breathing faster,
it's no problem.

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It's getting more oxygen to your brain.

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And participants who learned 
to view the stress response

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as helpful for their performance, well, 
they were less stressed out,

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less anxious, more confident, 
but the most fascinating finding to me

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was how their physical stress response changed.

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Now, in a typical stress response, 
your heart rate goes up,

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and your blood vessels constrict like this.

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And this is one of the reasons that
chronic stress is sometimes associated

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with cardiovascular disease.

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It's not really healthy 
to be in this state all the time.

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But in the study, when participants 
viewed their stress response as helpful,

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their blood vessels stayed relaxed like this.

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Their heart was still pounding, but this 
is a much healthier

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cardiovascular profile.

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It actually looks a lot like what happens
in moments of joy and courage.

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Over a lifetime of stressful experiences,
this one biological change

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could be the difference between a 
stress-induced heart attack at age 50

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and living well into your 90s.

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And this is really what the new science 
of stress reveals,

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that how you think about stress matters.

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So my goal as a health psychologist 
has changed. I no longer want to get rid of your stress.

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that how you think about stress matters.

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I want to make you better at stress. 
And we just did a little intervention.

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If you raised your hand and said you'd 
had a lot of stress in the last year,

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we could have saved your life,

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your heart is pounding from stress, 
because hopefully the next time

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you're going to remember this talk 
and you're going to think to yourself,

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this is my body helping me
rise to this challenge.

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And when you view stress in that way,

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your body believes you, 
and your stress response becomes healthier.

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Now I said I have over a decade of 
demonizing stress to redeem myself from,

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so we are going to do one more intervention.
I want to tell you about

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one of the most under-appreciated
aspects of the stress response,

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and the idea is this: 
Stress makes you social.

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To understand this side of stress, 
we need to talk about a hormone, oxytocin,

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and I know oxytocin has already
gotten as much hype as a hormone can get.

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It even has its own cute nickname, 
the cuddle hormone,

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because it's released when you hug someone.

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But this is a very small part of what
oxytocin is involved in.

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Oxytocin is a neuro-hormone.

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It fine-tunes your brain's 
social instincts.

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It primes you to do things 
that strengthen close relationships.

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Oxytocin makes you crave physical contact 
with your friends and family.

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It enhances your empathy.

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It even makes you more willing to help 
and support the people you care about.

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Some people have even suggested we should
snort oxytocin

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to become more compassionate and caring.

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But here's what most people don't understand about oxytocin.

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It's a stress hormone.

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Your pituitary gland pumps this stuff out 
as part of the stress response.

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It's as much a part of 
your stress response

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as the adrenaline 
that makes your heart pound.

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And when oxytocin is released 
in the stress response,

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it is motivating you to seek support.

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Your biological stress response 
is nudging you to

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tell someone how you feel 
instead of bottling it up.

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Your stress response wants to 
make sure you notice

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when someone else in your life is 
struggling so that you can

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support each other. 
When life is difficult,

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your stress response wants you 
to be surrounded by

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people who care about you.

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Okay, so how is knowing this side of 
stress going to make you healthier?

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Well, oxytocin doesn't only act 
on your brain. It also acts on your body,

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and one of its main roles in your body 
is to protect your cardiovascular system

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from the effects of stress.
It's a natural anti-inflammatory.

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It also helps your blood vessels 
stay relaxed during stress.

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But my favorite effect on the body 
is actually on the heart.

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Your heart has receptors for this hormone,
and oxytocin helps heart cells regenerate

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and heal from any stress-induced damage.
This stress hormone strengthens your heart,

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and the cool thing is that all of these 
physical benefits of oxytocin

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are enhanced by social contact
and social support,

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so when you reach out to others under 
stress, either to seek support

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or to help someone else, 
you release more of this hormone,

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your stress response becomes healthier, 
and you actually

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recover faster from stress.

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I find this amazing, 
that your stress response

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has a built-in mechanism 
for stress resilience,

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and that mechanism is human connection.

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I want to finish by telling you 
about one more study.

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And listen up, 
because this study could also save a life.

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This study tracked about 
1,000 adults in the United States,

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and they ranged in age from 34 to 93, 
and they started the study by asking,

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"How much stress 
have you experienced in the last year?"

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They also asked,
"How much time have you spent

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helping out friends, neighbors,
people in your community?"

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And then they used public records for 
the next five years to find out who died.

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Okay, so the bad news first:

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For every major stressful 
life experience,

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like financial difficulties 
or family crisis,

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that increased the risk of dying 
by 30 percent.

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But -- and I hope you 
are expecting a but by now --

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but that wasn't true for everyone.

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People who spent time caring for others 
showed absolutely

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no stress-related increase in dying. Zero.

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Caring created resilience.

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And so we see once again 
that the harmful effects of stress

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on your health are not inevitable.

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How you think and how you act 
can transform your experience of stress.

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When you choose to view 
your stress response as helpful,

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you create the biology of courage.

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And when you choose 
to connect with others under stress,

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you can create resilience.

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Now I wouldn't necessarily ask 
for more stressful experiences in my life,

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but this science has given me 
a whole new appreciation for stress.

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Stress gives us access to our hearts.

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The compassionate heart that finds joy
and meaning in connecting with others,

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and yes, your pounding physical heart, 
working so hard

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to give you strength and energy,

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and when you choose to view stress
in this way,

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you're not just getting better at stress,

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you're actually making 
a pretty profound statement.

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You're saying that you can trust 
yourself to handle life's challenges,

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and you're remembering 
that you don't have to face them alone.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)

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Chris Anderson: This is kind of amazing, 
what you're telling us.

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It seems amazing to me 
that a belief about stress

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can make so much difference 
to someone's life expectancy.

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How would that extend to advice, 
like, if someone is making

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a lifestyle choice between,
say, a stressful job

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and a non-stressful job, 
does it matter which way they go?

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It's equally wise to go 
for the stressful job

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so long as you believe 
that you can handle it, in some sense?

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Kelly McGonigal: Yeah,
and one thing we know for certain

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is that chasing meaning 
is better for your health

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than trying to avoid discomfort.

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And so I would say 
that's really the best way

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to make decisions, is go after 
what it is that creates meaning

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in your life and then trust yourself 
to handle the stress that follows.

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Chris Anderson: Thank you so much, Kelly. 
It's pretty cool.

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KM: Thank you.

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(Applause)