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I have a confession to make,

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but first, I want you

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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.

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Anyone?

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How about a moderate amount of stress?

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Who has experienced a lot of stress?

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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

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for the last 10 years is doing more harm than good,

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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

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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,

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and today, I want to change yours.

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Let me start with the study that made me rethink

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my whole approach to stress.

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This study tracked 30,000 adults in the United States

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for eight years, 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, "Do you believe

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that stress is harmful for your health?"

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And then they used public death records

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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 experience a lot of stress

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but did not view stress as harmful

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were no more likely to die.

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In fact, they had the lowest risk of dying

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of anyone in the study, including people

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who had relatively little stress.

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Now the researchers estimated that over the eight years

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they were tracking deaths,

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182,000 Americans died prematurely,

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not from stress, but from the belief

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that stress is bad for you.

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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

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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,

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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

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stress is bad for your health.

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So this study got me wondering:

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can changing how you think about stress

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make you healthier? And here the science says yes.

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When you change your mind about stress,

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you can change your body's response to stress.

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Now to explain how this works,

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I want you all to pretend that you are participants

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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

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impromptu speech on your personal weaknesses

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to a panel of expert evaluators sitting right in front of you,

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and to make sure you feel the pressure,

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there are bright lights and a camera in your face,

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kind of like this.

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And the evaluators have been trained

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to give you discouraging, non-verbal feedback like this.

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(Laughter)

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Now that you're sufficiently demoralized,

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time for part two: a math test.

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And unbeknownst to you,

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the experimenter has been trained to harass you during it.

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Now we're going to all do this together.

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It's going to be fun.

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For me.

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(Laughter)

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Okay. I want you all to count backwards

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from 996 in increments of seven.

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You're going to do this out loud

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as fast as you can, starting with 996.

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Go!

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Go faster. Faster please.

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You're going too slow.

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Stop. Stop, stop, stop.

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That guy made a mistake.

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We are going to have to start all over again. (Laughter)

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You're not very good at this, are you.

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Okay, so you get the idea.

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Now, if you were actually in this study,

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you'd probably be a little stressed out.

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Your heart might be pounding,

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you might be breathing faster, maybe breaking out into to a sweat.

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And normally, we interpret these physical changes

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as anxiety

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

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But what if you viewed them instead

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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

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in a study conducted at Harvard University.

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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 viewed the stress response

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as helpful for their performance,

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well, they were less stressed out,

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less anxious, more confident,

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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,

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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 why chronic stress

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is sometimes associated 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

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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,

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but this is a much healthier cardiovascular profile.

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It actually looks a lot like what happens

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in moments of joy and courage.

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Over a lifetime of stressful experiences,

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this one biological change

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could be the difference

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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.

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I no longer want to get rid of your stress.

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I want to make you better at stress.

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And we just did a little intervention.

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If you raised your hand and said

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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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because hopefully the next time

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your heart is pounding from stress,

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you're going to remember this talk

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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,

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and your stress response becomes healthier.

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Now I said I have over a decade of demonizing stress

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to redeem myself from,

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so we are going to do one more intervention.

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I want to tell you about one of the most

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under-appreciated aspects of the stress response,

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and the idea is this:

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stress makes you social.

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To understand this side of stress,

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we need to talk about a hormone, oxytocin,

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and I know oxytocin has already gotten

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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

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that strengthen close relationships.

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Oxytocin makes you crave physical contact

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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

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the people you care about.

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Some people have even suggested

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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

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about oxytocin.

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It's a stress hormone.

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Your pituitary gland pumps this stuff out

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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

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is nudging you to tell someone how you feel

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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

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so that you can support each other.

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When life is difficult, your stress response wants you

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to be surrounded by people who care about you.

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Okay, so how is knowing this side of stress

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going to make you healthier?

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Well, oxytocin doesn't only act on your brain.

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It also acts on your body,

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and one of its main roles in your body

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is to protect your cardiovascular system

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from the effects of stress.

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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,

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and oxytocin helps heart cells regenerate

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and heal from any stress-induced damage.

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This stress hormone strengthens your heart,

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and the cool things is is that all of these physical benefits

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of oxytocin are enhanced by social contact

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and social support,

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so when you reach out to others under stress,

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either to seek support or to help someone else,

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you release more of this hormone,

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your stress response becomes healthier,

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and you actually recover faster from stress.

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I find this amazing,

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that your stress response has a built-in mechanism

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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 a thousand adults in the United States,

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and they ranged in age from 34 to 93,

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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,

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people in your community?"

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And then they used public records for the next five years

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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

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showed absolutely no stress-related increase in dying.

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Zero.

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Caring created resilience.

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And so we see once again

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that the harmful effects of stress on your health

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are not inevitable.

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How you think and how you act

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can transform your experience of stress.

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When you choose to view your stress response

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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

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for more stressful experiences in my life,

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but this science has given me

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a whole new appreciation for stress.

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Stress gives us access to our hearts.

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The compassionate hearts that finds joy and meaning

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in connecting with others,

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and yes, your pounding physical heart,

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working so hard 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

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to handle life's challenges,

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and you're remembering that

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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: I mean,

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this is kind of amazing, what you're telling us.

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It seems amazing me 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,

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like, if someone is making a lifestyle choice

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between, say, a stressful job and a non-stressful job,

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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 to make decisions,

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is go after what it is that creates meaning in your life

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and then trust yourself to handle the stress that follows.

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CA: Thank you so much, Kelly. It's pretty cool.
KM: Thank you.

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(Applause)