The Upside of Stress

Why Stress Is Good for You, and How to Get Good at It

By: Kelly McGonigal

Narrated by: Kelly McGonigal

The author of The Willpower Instinct delivers a controversial and groundbreaking new book that overturns long-held beliefs about stress.

More than 44 percent of Americans admit to losing sleep over stress. And while most of us do everything we can to reduce it, Stanford psychologist and best-selling author Kelly McGonigal, PhD, delivers a startling message: Stress isn't bad. In The Upside of Stress, McGonigal highlights new research indicating that stress can, in fact, make us stronger, smarter, and happier - if we learn how to embrace it.

The Upside of Stress is the first audiobook to bring together cutting-edge discoveries on the correlation between resilience - the human capacity for stress-related growth - and mind-set, the power of beliefs to shape reality. As she did in The Willpower Instinct, McGonigal combines science, stories, and exercises into an engaging and practical book that is both entertaining and life-changing, showing you:

• How to cultivate a mind-set to embrace stress
• How stress can provide focus and energy
• How stress can help people connect and strengthen close relationships
• Why your brain is built to learn from stress and how to increase its ability to learn from challenging experiences

McGonigal's TED talk on the subject has already received more than seven million views. Her message resonates with people who know they can't eliminate the stress in their lives and want to learn to take advantage of it. The Upside of Stress is not a guide to getting rid of stress but a guide to getting better at stress by understanding it, embracing it, and usng it.

©2015 Kelly McGonigal (P)2015 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"In this smart, practical book, Kelly McGonigal shows that stress isn't nearly as bad as it reputation. In fact, if we change our mindsets just a bit, we can transform stress from a barrier that thwarts to a resource that propels us. The Upside of Stress is a perfect how-to guide for anyone who wants to tap into the biology of courage and the psychology of thriving under pressure." (Daniel H. Pink, author of Drive and To Sell Is Human)

"A fascinating tour of cutting-edge research on how stress affects us in ways, both good and bad, that we never suspect. McGonigal brings scientific studies to life, makes her lessons tangible and provides fascinating take-aways for anyone who experiences stress - which, let's face it, is all of us, often all the time." (Charles Duhigg, MBA, author of The Power of Habit)

"A courageous, counterintuitive, and convincing case for a big idea: stress can be good for you. This enchanting, evidence-based book has already transformed how I think about stress, and I recommend it highly to anyone who lives in the 21st century." (Adam Grant, PhD, Wharton professor and author of Give and Take)

A must read for just about anyone

Almost everyone had come across stress in some shape or form. As a result there is something in this book for just about anyone.

Kelly McGonigal is awesome!!

This book is literally life changing. You'll never view stress the same way again. Thank you, Kelly!

This book is a gift

I've listened to this book 4 times now. Each time I gain more from it, each time I've gained new relevant insights into current life challenges.

I'm a chiropractor in active practice and like the author I HAD an over all negative view of the stress response in the context of our modern society. My view has shifted significantly due to what I've learned from this work. Understanding so much more about how nuanced and useful our stress response is, even in our modern society, has meaningfully shifted the entire dialogue I have with my practice.

Personally my approach to the pain and challenge of raising teenagers, as well as my overall perspective to that challenge has changed. All the tools laid out in this book have, with certainty, helped me reconnect to the kind of person and parent I what to be.

The knowledge I've gained from this book and deployed into my life,, has made my life better. Get this book.

Life Changing

I struggled to finish the book, but it changed my mind about how I see stress.

Excellent book with life changing insights

The insights in this book were just what I need for the phase of life I’m facing now. I’ve chosen this book because I’ve read “the will power instinct” which was also life changing.

I found some chapters a bit repetitive. The same idea that a positive view on stress changes it’s effects is repeated time and time again, so that could have been shorter.

I really appreciate that this audiobook was read by the author unlike “the will Power instinct” that (although had a good narrator) was narrated by a man.

Authentic and Relevantl

Thank you for your authentic inquiry into this topic. The way you used focused questions, credible evidence, and story to teach these concepts made the book easy to access and transfer to my life.

Life changing

Calling it life changing would be underestimating the impact of this book. I will recommend reading this book to anyone I know. That’s the least I can do to help spread the content and the message of this incredible book.

Bedtime Reading for Insomniacs

Akido--according to Wikipedia--is 'the martial arts principle or tactic of blending with an attacker's movements for the purpose of controlling their actions with minimal effort'. In this case, stress is the attacker. McGonigal's 'The Upside of Stress' is your akido.

In this title, McGonigal states that viewing stress as an intrusion to what-would-be-our-otherwise-normal life kills people. How many of us have spent months/years/decades wishing for a particular stress to go away? Of those, how many of us have actually succeeded in that wish? Such wishing and resisting has been proven to age a person quickly; McGonigal presents a cogent, engaging and empirical argument that all of us need to take a different (and initially non-intuitive) approach to the stresses that bind us.

If McGonigal's TED talk doesn't speak to you, then perhaps spend your credit elsewhere (and be thankful for your well-balanced mindset). For me, this title was earth-shifting: I wish I would have read this book twenty years ago, but am glad that I didn't wait any longer. McGonigal's excellent self-narration adds a further degree of sincerity to the title. My roughly-edited pocket notes below for reference.

----- tl;dr -----

- Allow the larger forces of the world to move as they do: Those would don't believe aging is bad live longer. Those who trust others live longer.
- Strategies that backfire: showing smokers lung cancer photos. Shaming women for being overweight.
- Stress is an overused term, ranging from the trivial to the traumatic. McGonigal's definition: stress is something that arises when something you care about is at stake. Thus, stress and meaning are irrovacably linked.
- Transform your relationship with stress: rethink and embrace it. Choose to see the good in it.
- Mindset reset: how you think about something can transform it's affect on you. 'The effect you expect is the effect you get.'
- Milkshake experiment: body's chemical reaction is a function of what's on the label, not what's in the milkshake.
- Mock interview experiment: more positive chemical reactions for those subjects who were told that stress is good.
- Placebo effects are temporary. Mindset effects are permanent.
- Those who believe stress is beneficial are less depressed and more satisfied with their lives.
- View stress as a challenge, not an overwhelming problem. Find meaning in difficult circumstances.
- Mindsets do not correlate with optimism, the amount of stress in your life, mindfulness, or the ability to tolerate uncertainty.
- Those unaccepting of stress tend to be avoidant, distract themselves, turn to alcohol.
- The belief that stress is helpful is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
- Experiment: freshmen ivy league school one-hour intervention on belonging closed the minority GPA gap
- Three steps to stress: acknowledge it, embrace that you care about something, make use of the energy that stress gives you.
- Steps to an effective intervention: learn the new point of view, do an exercise, share the idea.
- View stress as flexible, not black and white. Choose the side you want.
- Successful stress coping: Have hope. Make a choice. Find meaning. You are not a lab rat in an uncontrolled, meaningless and unpredictable scenario.
- Stress responses: fight/flight, challenge, tend/befriend.
- The stress paradox: a meaningful life is a stressful life. Higher stress yields a less depressed society.
- Stress awakens the search for meaning.
- The mindset that stress is an intrusion is what kills.
- Understand your values, not just what is good. Create a narrative of personal adequacy.
- Avoiding stress creates more stress.
- 'Just another cold dark night on the side of Mount Everest.'
- You are most likely to become a victim of your own stress when you forget the context in which it arises.
- Experiment: Bell Telephone employees: the healthiest took action on whatever they could, and either changed the situation or changed how the situation affected them.
- Hardiness: the courage to grow and change from stress.
- Experiment: practice GREs. the students with highest stress plus mindset intervention did the best.
- Physiological anxiety is different than worry. The latter you can transform. The former will always be there. (Your palms sweat on a first date because you're close to something you want.)
- When people are instructed they can handle stress, it works.
- Experiment: videotaped speech with planted critics. Mindset intervention was better than calming intervention or distraction by video games. Experiment done with people with severe anxiety disorder.
- Those with an anxiety disorder have the same physiological reaction as others, they just believe it to be higher than others.
- Most people cannot choose the stress they have in their lives. You can choose how you deal with it. The one resource you always have is yourself.
- Stress trigger chemicals that make you social, smart and brave.
- Electing to care for others releases the same chemicals as stress.
- Experiment: helping others--even the smallest gesture--alleviated time scarcity in subjects more than awarding them more time.
- 'Greater than self goals' have a similar effect: define yoru job not by your skills, but by what larger purpose it serves. Personal goals are more likely to be achieved when greater-than-self goals are the focus.
- We tend to underestimate others' stress (re: everyone is happy on social media). Nothing is more universal in humanity than suffering.
- Make the invisible visible. Experiment: common suffering anonymous survey with a group of people.
- 'May we all know our own strength'
- Experiment: those most resistant to freezing water on the hand are those with the most past traumas.
- Those with the least amount of stress in their history tend to catastrophize.
- 'Shift and resist' - allows those with the most stress to be more healthy.
- Extreme traumas: 'It's not that X is good. I just found the good in X.' Need to acknowledge both the good and bad--don't just blow sunshine.
- Restorative journalism creates vicarious resilience in a community. Example: 9/11 widow who eventually adopted more children.
- Stress is harmful when it isolates, creates inadequacy, and feels random/meaningless.
- Create yearly stress goals that challenge and create growth, not yearly resolutions.

Mind Bending, Breaking, Reshaping, Freeing

If only one book this year, make it this one. It is the beginning of a love affair with stress.

A MUST-READ FOR SUCCESS: PERSONAL OR PROFESSIONAL

Can't recommend this book or its actionable techniques enough, check it out if you want to learn how to leverage your stress.