Stress Can Be A Good Thing · CrewFusion HOP Academy

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Stress Can Be A Good Thing

My drive home from work is, on average, 35 minutes. Some days I’m feeling great, other days I’m feeling pretty darned stressed out.

No matter how I’m feeling, one of my strategies for overall health and performance is to walk through my front door and greet my wife and two young girls in a manner that makes them, and myself, feel loved and appreciated. If I’m stressed and need to talk about it, I’ll tap into a “stress-is-enhancing” mindset, which I use to redirect stored stress energy to achieve goals that align with my values.

The "stress-is-enhancing" mindset, developed by Dr. Alia Crum, involves viewing stress not as a purely negative experience but as an opportunity for growth, learning, and improved performance. This mindset does not mean that stress is inherently good, rather it recognises the potential for the challenges and adversity associated with stress to lead to beneficial outcomes in cognition, health, performance, and wellbeing. It involves acknowledging stress, welcoming it as an indicator of something we care about, and using the stress response to achieve our goals.

The mindset operates through several pathways:

1. It changes our motivation when faced with stress, prompting us not to avoid stress but to leverage it for positive results.

2. It can impact our affect around stress, allowing for more positive experiences, even during stress.

3. It might even influence physiology, leading to a more moderate cortisol response and increased levels of DHEA (the hormone that modulates endothelial function, reducing inflammation, improves blood flow, cellular immunity, physical strength) in response to stress.

Alia Crum and Andrew Huberman have outlined a stepped process to adopt this mindset:

1. Acknowledge Your Stress: Recognise and own your stress. Being mindful of it is the first step toward transformation. Understand that stress signifies something important to you, which can drive you to improve or succeed.

2. Welcome the Stress: Instead of resisting it, understand that stress often reflects your values, cares, or passions.

3. Utilise the Stress Response: Redirect the energy from stress toward achieving the goals tied to your values. Breathwork, Wim Hof breathing technique, physiological sigh.

4. Reframe Physical Responses: Interpret physiological signs of stress—like a racing heart or sweaty palms—as your body preparing to engage and perform effectively.

5. Educate Yourself: Learn about how stress can enhance cognition, focus, and performance. Studies show that understanding the enhancing nature of stress can lead to physiological changes that improve your response to stress.This one changed my life.

6. Reduce Negative Self-Talk: Shift away from thoughts that frame stress as wholly detrimental. Instead, focus on how stress can help motivate you to achieve your objectives. Avoid creating additional stress about being stressed.

7. Seek Safe Stressful Challenges: Engage in activities that present manageable stressors that can promote growth without being overwhelming. Cold plunge or shower, high intensity exercise, public speaking, taking the last chocolate chip cookie from the cookie jar.

8. Join Growth Mindset and Stress Insights: Understand that a growth mindset ties closely with seeing stress as enhancing, as both frameworks encourage resilience and adaptability in the face of challenges.

Through my own understanding of these tips, I am able to “show up” to my family as a confident, well-adjusted husband and father that is ready to listen and understand what my family has dealt with today.

When I feel it’s time to discuss my own day, I have been able to internally manage my own stress response, and can calmly discuss what stressors I have, on my terms, without projecting any negative outcomes onto my family.

My stress-is-enhancing mindset has led me through tough times on more occasions than I care to count. If you desire to be a high performer as a family member, parent, leader, follower, cookie thief; this learned human skill may help you through some tough times as well.

Feel like talking about your experiences? Go ahead, I’m here to listen, we’re here to share.

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