TED SUMMARY Kelly McGonigal: How to Make Stress your Friend

 “How to make stress your friend” spoken by Kelly McGonigal correctly portrays the effects of stress on the human body and how an individual can change their opinion of stress to remove the negative effects because however one views stress is how it affects them, negative or positive. McGonigal discussed the causes of stress and how the causes can hurt or help the age one dies among other concerns, like risk of heart attacks. As a health psychologist, she addresses how over the years she has told people to avoid stress because it is bad for you. She continues to explain that her opinion has changed, “My goal as a health psychologist has changed. I no longer want to get rid of your stress. I want to make you better at stress...If you raised your hand and said you'd had a lot of stress in the last year, we could have saved your life, because hopefully the next time your heart is pounding from stress, you're going to remember this talk and you're going to think to yourself, this is my body helping me rise to this challenge. And when you view stress in that way, your body believes you,and your stress response becomes healthier”(McGonigal). This TED Talk firstly, has taught about we should be looking at stress as a positive and not a negative. Secondly, her words taught us an even bigger lesson, your perspective changes the outcome of everything.  

The Talon’s author Mary Brown discusses how stress levels increase crazy amounts during the school year, “Over 1,000 teens participated in a survey released by the American Psychological Association, and 83% reported that school was a significant source of stress. 27% claimed to experience “extreme stress” during the school year, and that number dropped to 13% during summer vacation. It has even been reported that teens experience higher stress levels than adults”.

In schools, stress is not regarded as a problem, but little help is provided to help cope with it. To change this thought process like McGonigal suggested, teachers should not only show this Ted Talk, but transform learning environments so they encourage positive stress. It would create a much better environment and help decrease negative emotions from stress. Planet Earth is full of stressed people. The people of the world are filled with stress every day. As we have learned from this speech, bad stress is bad, but good stress can be good. Imagine if unlike this photo below, stress did not feel like the whole world was on your shoulders.

McGonigal sums this statement, that stress can be changed, “how you think and how you act can transform your experience of stress. When you choose to view your stress response as helpful, you create the biology of courage. And when you choose to connect with others under stress, you can create resilience. Now I wouldn't necessarily ask for more stressful experiences in my life, but this science has given me a whole new appreciation for stress. Stress gives us access to our hearts. The compassionate heart that finds joy and meaning in connecting with others, and yes, your pounding physical heart, working so hard to give you strength and energy. And when you choose to view stress in this way, you're not just getting better at stress, you're actually making a pretty profound statement. You're saying that you can trust yourself to handle life's challenges. And you're remembering that you don't have to face them alone”. Her explanation of how everyone, every person in the world can change how they view stress could change our future. Stress could help us.