Is stress good or bad for you?

How to Make Stress Your Friend


As you know I have been checking out on TED talks recently and I noticed this one about making stress your friend. Now, really? I have always believed stress is bad for you and so I dismissed it. But it came up again in the discussion forum of the coaching course I'm currently taking in Coursera. So I thought why not, and I watched it.

Well, I don't know. The speaker claimed that recent science has proven that if you think stress is not bad for you, it will not be bad for you. And on the flip side, if you think stress is bad, it will probably end up killing you.

I'm not sure how this will hold up. I mean, isn't this like the egg yolk is bad for you, then egg yolk is good for you, and then egg yolk is bad for you (or is it still good?), that they can't even decide.

Now it's stress's turn?

But I do like what she said in the last part when someone asked her if it's then true that we can go for extremely stressful jobs if we know we can handle it. She said, "chasing meaning is better for your health than trying to avoid discomfort...that's the best way to make decisions...go after what it is that creates meaning in your life, and then trust yourself to handle the stress that follows."

Go after what creates meaning in your life - now she's talking.

pearlie