WEBVTT

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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.

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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.
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, 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, 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, "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) 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) 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) That is over
20,000 deaths a year.

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Now, if that estimate is correct, that
would make believing stress is bad for you

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the 15th largest cause of death
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) 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 make you healthier?

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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, 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,
and you're told you have to give

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a five-minute 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, kind of like this.

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(Laughter) And the evaluators
have been trained

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

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(Exhales) (Laughter) 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, 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. For me. Okay.

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(Laughter) 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.

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Go! (Audience counting)
Go faster. Faster please.

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You're going too slow. (Audience
counting) 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) You're not
very good at this, are you?

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Okay, so you get the idea.
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 a sweat.

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And normally, we interpret
these physical changes 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
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 view the stress response

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as helpful for their performance,

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well, they were less stressed out,
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,
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

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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 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 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.

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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 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
your heart is pounding from stress,

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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,
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 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

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about 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. 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. 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
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 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 to be surrounded

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by 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.

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It also acts on your body,
and one of its main roles in your body

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is to protect your cardiovascular
system 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
and heal from any stress-induced damage.

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This stress hormone
strengthens your heart.

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And the cool thing is that all
of these physical benefits

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of oxytocin are enhanced by social
contact 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, 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, that your stress
response has a built-in mechanism

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for stress resilience,
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 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 to find out who died.

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Okay, so the bad news first:
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 that the harmful
effects of stress on your health

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are not inevitable.
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 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, 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,

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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 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. (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 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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KM: Yeah, and one thing
we know for certain

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is that chasing meaning is better for your
health 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.

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(Applause)