[00:00:00] Welcome back to not another mindset show. Today I have a very research heavy episode for you, but I don’t want that to scare you away. It’s not going to be like we’re talking statistics and super complex methods here for the next 20 to 30 minutes. But instead I, I wanted it to be quote unquote research heavy because it is.

It is an area that can feel a little bit, how do I say, it can feel fake. And a lot of, honestly, mindset stuff can feel that way, especially when you get into, like, the woo woo manifestation space, which, nothing against that space. I like to play in that space too, but that’s not what we’re doing today. We are talking about how your mindset can actually influence your stress response.

But not [00:01:00] just feeling how stressed you are, but instead, like how your body reacts. is responding from a physiological level. Like we’re talking hormone science intertwined with mindset science. So when we talk about cortisol, we have to talk about stress. And you know, there’s like so much crap. At this, at this moment right now, there’s so much crap in social media land related to cortisol.

And I don’t know who, like, when did we decide? Who decided? Why is this happening? That cortisol is just being, like, absolutely demonized. Cortisol is the worst thing for you on the planet right now. It used to be, like, fruit. And bananas, and then it was oatmeal, and now it’s cortisol. Um, and first and foremost, from a mindset perspective, oh my god, if we are so worried about cortisol being bad for us, [00:02:00] stress being bad for us, and that is the mindset that you have about these things, you’re in a really tough spot.

Really tough spot. Because when it comes to managing your stress or seeing stress as anything that is, anything Even remotely good like that’s that’s never going to happen. You’re gonna have a hard time managing it You’re gonna have a hard time managing your mindset around it. And therefore you’re not gonna be very good at Making it through activities that are stressful which fairly certain We all have some form of stressors in our life every single day.

So anyway, I digress For, like, if you hear anything this entire episode, just know that, like, cortisol is not inherently bad and stress is not inherently bad. I, like, I could stop the episode there. But, instead, I actually have some research to support that. Um, so, with that, you know, I could go the direction.[00:03:00] 

Of like, take, put my nutrition coach hat on. It’s it’s always on. You just may not see it as much. Cause I talk so much about mindset and behavior change, but it’s there. I could talk about how something like strength training is a stressor on your body and it stresses your muscles. We’re making micro tears in those muscles and then it is rebuilding.

And that’s how those muscles get bigger and stronger and better. But that. in the moment is a stressor on your body, but it’s not a bad stressor, right? So that is a really good example of where stress and cortisol are demonized, but they’re actually so useful in a situation like that. And there’s a lot of other examples of that.

And that’s what we’re going to talk about today. So the typical thoughts are that stress equals bad. Like, I’m pretty sure if you were to just walk outside, walk on the street and stop people and you were to say, Tell me what you think about stress. Oh, it’s, it’s bad for this reason, or it, [00:04:00] it makes me anxious, or I, I get stressed really easily, or I’m just, oh, stress, I’m just not good at managing that stuff.

It’s usually not positive. Like, I would, I, maybe, no, this is making me want to do this. I live in like a pretty, um, populated area of Austin and I can like literally walk outside my door and walk down the street and run into like crowds of people I could do this and and report back she pauses the podcast runs outside comes back.

Okay, so I did it. No, just kidding. I’m not I’m not that crazy. Um, but I do feel like it would be you’d be hard pressed to find people who are I mean, it’s not like they’re immediately going to explain to you how stress is good in their lives, right? um Which you’ll probably find some and this is where again like my researcher brain is like I bet those people who are quick to say that stress can actually be good and how stress maybe adds to their lives in some ways [00:05:00] Those people are likely more successful in more than one area of their life than than most are and they probably struggle less achieving their goals and Their potential?

I bet you. Anyway, just an, just a hypothesis that will never actually get tested, but maybe you guys can let me know. You can shoot me a DM, comment on this video on YouTube, if that’s where you are watching, where it’s where you are tuning in from. And let me know if you’ve like seen this show up anywhere, like with yourself, friends, family members, clients, whatever, and their perspective of stress and maybe someone in your life, or maybe it’s you that has like a pretty good perspective around stress and how that’s made a difference in your life.

And then maybe how you’ve seen. The opposite as well. So, here’s the thing. How you think about stress can make a significant difference in your stress response and how you manage stress. [00:06:00] So the typical thinking of stress equals bad. Stress is not good. Doing anything good for me in my life, that is, is no bueno, no bueno.

And I have a few research studies that I would like to share with you to kind of exemplify this, if you will. So, I have some notes down here, because I wanted to make sure I do the researchers justice and do not just make things up on the spot, which I, I tend to do when I’m teaching, um, health mindset.

coaching certification calls and like mentorship calls and things like that. I’m like, Oh, I know there’s this one study and I think this is how it went, but I could be entirely wrong. So I don’t want to do that here for you guys. I have, I have the notes. Okay. So in this study, this is just a quick note in this one study, researchers 29, 000 people.

29, 000. This is a big sample size. Like, that’s huge. That’s a lot of [00:07:00] people to rate their overall level of stress in the last year and how much they believe that stress affected their health. Either a little, a moderate amount, or a lot. So, They’re asking these people, like, how much stress have you had and how much do you think it’s actually affecting you and your health, specifically.

The people who reported having experienced a lot of stress and who also believed that stress had a large impact on their health were 43 percent more likely to die. Over the next eight years, so they followed these 29, 000 people and saw a 43 percent increased likelihood of death in the people who said that they experienced a lot of stress and believe it has a large impact on their health.

In contrast, people who experienced a lot of stress, so still experience a lot of stress, but did not feel like stress had a major impact on their [00:08:00] health, were no more likely to die than those who had experienced little or moderate levels of stress. So we’re comparing groups of people, essentially, both who have experienced a lot of stress.

One group, Is saying, I don’t think this stress has a lot of impact on my health. And another group who says, I think this has a large effect on my health. Huge difference in likelihood of death. Is that not insane? So we’re really boiling it down to beliefs about how stress impacts your health. This finding tells us that it’s, isn’t necessarily the experience.

of high levels of stress that increases risk of mortality, but instead what’s particularly detrimental, detremental, is having a high level of stress coupled with the belief that stress leads to negative health outcomes. [00:09:00] That was a quote from the researchers and that’s why I clearly, clearly I’m not a researcher anymore because I can’t read researcher speak.

So, really, really something important to take away here. Thank you for your time. And this is from, again, a sample of 29, 000 people. Like this was not just me running out to the street and asking random people, right? 29, 000 people and a 43 percent increase. Damn. So, the people who believe that stress affects health a lot, or extremely in this case, are more than twice as likely to die from a heart attack compared to those without such beliefs, and this was from a different study, so we’re seeing, again, very similar effects of how your beliefs make a difference on your health outcomes, which is literally the reason why I’m sitting in this chair and speaking to you all is because I have spent so much [00:10:00] time learning about how our beliefs and what we think, how that plays a role in our health behaviors.

Right. And so we’re not even seeing just necessarily, Oh, this is so interesting. Now I’m getting a thought, I’m getting a thought it’s, it’s being downloaded currently because I talk a lot about health behaviors. So exercise, eating well, et cetera. And how your mindset plays a role in how often you do those things.

And what we’re seeing from these studies is that your beliefs about stress impacting your health leads to a greater risk of mortality. shorter life, heart attacks, like not great things for your health. But what I can see here that there’s likely a relationship, again, like, I don’t know for sure, like, don’t quote me, I haven’t done this research, but it makes sense knowing what I know about mindset and health behaviors.

And what I’m seeing from the results of these research studies is that it makes a [00:11:00] lot of sense because These people are thinking I’m so, I have so much stress and this is impacting me so much that it probably leads to them doing less for their health, eating less healthy, working out less. Because they almost kind of see themselves as a lost cause and that way that my life is already so stressful and it’s clearly impacting my health like my, they’re saying this right like this is largely impacting my health, the levels of stress that I’m experiencing and how much stress is in my life that when you get to that point where you’re like I’m, it’s sort of like a what the hell effect type of situation where like why would I, why would I even try.

To save myself because, like, I’m already screwed, you know, and this is just, to me, like, that is a very clear, classic case of a fixed mindset, my friends. But, again, this is me just hypothesizing based on the knowledge that [00:12:00] I have and what I’m reading here, but I bet it’s all connected. I bet. And I bet those same people feel like they can’t get a handle on their stress, and it’s sort of like a runaway train.

situation. So, like, you just kind of throw up your hands at that point, right? Oh, interesting, interesting. Okay. Some more research from the Mind and Body Lab at Stanford with Dr. Crum. I love all of her work so much. It’s so interesting and it’s so parallel to a lot of the work that I did in the Mindset Lab at NC State.

We actually did some collaborative work when I was, um, working in the lab then, like we exchanged, um, some thoughts and did some collaborative work on papers when I was in the lab and actually met Dr. Crum a couple times. She, she actually came to my poster. Oh, I forgot about that. I presented a [00:13:00] poster at a conference when I was still in grad school.

And, um, she was there and some other members of her lab, and she came over to my poster and we chatted about my research. Um, but her work is just so fun. Freaking cool. Um, and so I’m excited to share a little bit of it with you. So in this study, researchers, Dr. Crum included, had employees from a financial institution, and they were assigned to one of three groups.

The first group had 164 people in it, and they watched videos that showcased how stress is harmful. It causes illness and work mistakes, and we’re calling this type of mindset, this like belief, what these videos are meant to make you believe, we call it stress is debilitating type of mindset. And then there’s group two that had 163 people in it, and they watched videos showcasing quite the opposite.

How stress can be useful by improving immunity, creativity, and work quality under [00:14:00] pressure. And. This is like the flip side of the coin, of the mindset coin, is the stress is enhancing mindset. So these videos were essentially meant to experimentally manipulate your mindset and shift your mindset in the direction of either stress is enhancing or stress is debilitating.

And then there was a third group of 61 people that didn’t watch any videos. We were not, we, I was not part of this study. Um, they were not trying to be manipulated in any direction. And the purpose of a control group in experiments is so that there’s a, a baseline to compare the experimental effects to.

So it’s essentially like we have some, We have some people watching these videos that will likely shift their mindset towards a stress is enhancing mindset. We have some people who are watching these videos that will likely shift their mindset to a stress is debilitating mindset. And then we have some people watching [00:15:00] no videos just so we can compare to a baseline.

If that makes sense. So first and important to note, first results, first findings, the people in each group had a significant shift in their mindset compared to baseline. So that means that the experimental manipulation worked. And I know I’ve talked about manipulation checks in previous episodes when I’ve talked about mindset research, but that’s an extremely important step because if it didn’t work, then.

Any other work we do with that going forward means nothing, like we need to know that what we’re doing to shift someone’s mindset is actually working first before we start to evaluate anything else. So that worked. The people who watched the videos in either direction, stress is enhancing or stress is debilitating, did significantly have their mindset shifted in that direction.

Okay, so second, the result of this study showed that the [00:16:00] people who watched the videos about stress being helpful actually ended up reporting better work performance and lower levels of anxiety and depression down the line. So not only did we. I keep saying we as if I did this research. I didn’t. I promise I’m not trying to take credit for it.

I just like bundle all of us mindset researchers together, I guess. Um, so not only did the researcher successfully shift the mindsets of these people, but the people who are shifted in the, I guess, quote unquote, better direction that stress is enhancing, it’s actually doing something for them. Those people had better work performance and lower levels of anxiety and depression.

So within this, um, paper, that was study one and study two, and then there’s a third study that is kind of all encompassing, even though it was not with the same participants. So in this study, this next one that I want to tell you about, this time we [00:17:00] have a group of 63 college students. And we’re talking measures of cortisol, here it comes, our favorite stress hormone, and mindset, and how those two things play together.

So earlier in the semester, these students had their mindset about stress assessed. Say that ten times fast. So we already had an idea. of what these students, what their mindset was about stress. So we’re still talking this like stresses debilitating or stresses enhancing mindset one direction or the other.

This was already assessed at the beginning of the semester. It’s information that we have going into the study. So these students were in, I think it was like, I’m not, I’m not going to make this up, but it was, it was a psychology class, right? That’s where these college students were in. So one day in class.

The students came in and they were told that their salivary hormone measurements are going to be collected for research that was investigating the link between [00:18:00] personality variables and health. So they were told this, they weren’t necessarily told the real reason of the study and that’s, that is the ethical deception that is used in research.

And so on that day They thought that we were just going into like a normal lecture about charisma. Oh, it was a personality psychology course. That’s what it was. So this makes more sense now. So that’s the course that they were in. So they’re going into just a normal day, normal lecture, but they were also doing the saliva test about personality tests and whatever and hormones.

And they were learning about charisma. which included confidence, emotional intelligence, persuasion, and presence or authenticity. And students, as part of the lecture, again, they just think they’re in class, right? We’re asked to rate themselves on these components. So confidence, emotional intelligence, blah, blah, blah, rate themselves on these components, and then spend 10 minutes preparing a speech that they could deliver to the class in a charismatic manner.

So, [00:19:00] I’m sure everyone could hear this and go like, oh my god, I literally cannot imagine having to put together a speech about, about my charisma and my, my personality traits and have to deliver it with charisma. And then get this, they learned that five of them would be randomly selected to give their speech to the class and told that their peers would evaluate them on their levels of charisma.

But wait, it gets worse. They were also informed that they would be videotaped and that a team of experts from the business school would assess their ability. And participants were told that they could have the opportunity to receive feedback from their peers and the management professionals on their speeches.

So this was obviously a very stressful situation. Like one of you is going to get chosen and evaluated by these professionals from the business school, let alone, like, also your peers. And just public speaking in general is usually a pretty stressful situation for most people. And so because we’re looking at cortisol, [00:20:00] and that’s what we’re testing for with the salivary cortisol tests, which they were told it was just a hormone and personality test, researchers could see that the stress test that was induced, that’s what they’re, they’re calling this a stress test, right?

The public significantly increased cortisol levels in the students. So Okay, it worked. We significantly stressed out these kids. Okay, so the results of the study, because remember, we know already their mindset about stress. And now we are getting them to go through a stressful situation. And not only are they Ask them if they felt like it was stressful, which they did, but measure their cortisol levels to confirm that it was stressful on their body physiologically.

So, I’m going to read you guys the results here. Individuals who endorsed a stress enhancing mindset, so remember this is from that test at the beginning of the semester. Had a stronger desire to receive feedback than those who [00:21:00] endorsed a stress is debilitating mindset over and above other variables, including cortisol response and perceived stress.

This finding supports the logic that if one holds a stress is enhancing mindset, Then one will be more likely to choose behaviors that help meet the demand, value, or goal underlying the stressful situation, such that the stress is actively utilized towards enhancing ends. It’s like a lot of fancy speak, right?

But what we’re, what we’re seeing is that the people who see stress as something that could actually be beneficial to their lives. We’re more likely to want to receive feedback. So I want to pause here for a second because I’m, I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this in previous episodes, but I, I kind of want to be surprised if I haven’t.

But a hallmark sign of a growth mindset is that you lean into feedback, that you seek feedback because feedback is something that you know. is information that’s only going to make you better. Where someone with a fixed mindset, hallmark of [00:22:00] a fixed mindset is like, I don’t want feedback. Like, don’t tell me what I did wrong.

Don’t tell me how I can improve. Like, I just want to live in this land over here that like, I’m doing just fine. Because at the end of the day, someone with a fixed mindset doesn’t actually believe that they can get better, that they can improve. And so If they can’t actually do that, then any kind of negative feedback is really just going to feel like a personal attack for them.

So obviously they are going to try to avoid that at all costs. So we’re seeing here is obviously the stress enhancing mindset is similar to a growth mindset in that way, and also sets people up for far more success to meet the demand of stressful situations and know how to essentially like massage that situation so that it’s actually more of an enhancing situation rather than a negative one.

Debilitating, if we’re going to keep using those terms. So this stress is enhancing mindset was also related to more adaptive cortisol profiles. So for individuals who [00:23:00] have high cortisol reactivity to stress, having a stress is enhancing mindset lowered their cortisol response. So I’m going to say that again, because this is really important.

Having this stress is enhancing mindset. So a growth mindset about stress in some way, shape, or form, right? Okay. Bye. Was related to more adaptive cortisol responses. So someone who has a high. Cortisol reactivity to stress having this stresses enhancing growth mindset about stress lowered their cortisol response.

However, however, listen to this part really interesting. Those who had a low cortisol reactivity distress, so they didn’t see the same kind of spike. As these high reactive people did in their cortisol, having a stresses enhancing mindset actually increased their cortisol response. And this part is really, really important.

So please listen, because this is what I was saying at the beginning of the episode and [00:24:00] how like stress is always considered just like inherently bad and more cortisol just like must be bad. But listen here, because These people who maybe had a lower cortisol reactivity in this stressful public speaking situation, having a stresses enhancing mindset actually increased their cortisol response.

But this is actually a good thing because it kind of supports this hypothesis that stress mindset is related to different physiological responses under stress. So although the typical approach to stress is to reduce one’s arousal, like bring down that stress reaction and stay calm, the interaction between mindset and cortisol reactivity supports this hypothesis that stress mindset influences cortisol function in a more, in a more nuanced fashion, really.

So The situation that’s going on [00:25:00] here is what we were talking about at the very beginning, that stress isn’t always bad. And in fact, in fact, in fact, like when we’re talking about cortisol and stress, like if you never, if you didn’t have a stress response, if you had low cortisol, like you’d be in really bad shape.

We need these things to survive and feel our best and rise to the occasion with challenges. Like it is really important stuff. So what we’re seeing is that a stress is enhancing mindset. Having like a growth mindset about stress is associated with reduced activity in high cortisol responders and increased activity in low cortisol responders.

This is all a means to achieve an appropriate or moderate level of stress, which is what we need. And there’s some other research that was cited within this paper because What we’re seeing from these findings is that it falls in line with this other research that, that again was, was cited. [00:26:00] And these findings fall in line with the research that suggests that performance is at its peak at a moderate level of stress arousal.

And having a stresses enhancing mindset may assist in achieving that level. So, okay, I feel like that was a lot of jumbled words. And I said the same thing. a couple different ways because I know some of you are going to like hear this differently, but really what you need to take away is that first and foremost, how you see stress is going to make a difference in how your body physiologically responds like for from a hormone level.

Okay, but also, and also, also, also, please remember this, I don’t know how many times I’m going to like hound you guys on this episode about this. Having a high cortisol reactivity, a really strong stress response in situations. In those [00:27:00] situations, having a stress is enhancing mindset can help bring that down, kind of like.

chill you out a little bit. So you can be at more of a moderate level of stress because that’s where you’re going to operate at your peak performance, pay better attention to detail, and just overall be able to rise to the challenge better in that situation. But if your cortisol stress response, your overall reactivity to these stressful situations is actually not that high, that’s also not that good.

Because at a moderate level of arousal of stress, That’s where you’re actually going to perform your best. So having a stresses enhancing mindset, a growth mindset about stress in those situations actually brings up that cortisol response a little bit to help you reach that moderate level that is best for peak performance.

[00:28:00] Moderate level of stress is actually where we want to be if we want to perform our best and rise to these challenges and actually can continue our way forward. Really important stuff. Really, really cool stuff. So all in all here, we see how simply thinking about stress in a certain way, whether that’s good or bad, enhancing, debilitating, can change not how how you just operate in a stressful situation, but literally how your hormones respond.

Crazy, crazy, crazy. Okay. So at this point, No one should be surprised. I have some important questions for you, and I would really like you to take some time, in general, to think about how you think about stress. I know, super meta. I’m really asking, asking a lot here. But truly, when, I don’t know, maybe you were thinking about this even at the beginning, like, [00:29:00] when you think about stress and you think about stressful situations and when you are in moments of stress, how do you perceive that?

Thank you. Give me a scale of 1 to 10. From, from stress is enhancing to, wait, probably the other way, right? 1 is stress is entirely debilitating. 10, stress is very enhancing. Where do you fall? Where do you fall? Think about that and think about why that number is your number and be honest with yourself because I don’t want you, listen, I should have done this at the beginning because all of you are now primed to think that stress is actually something that is beneficial and is helpful.

And now I have shifted your mindset. I’m sure I have. And your ratings on that scale of one to 10 is probably higher than it would have been at the beginning of this episode. And that’s kind of like a cool way for me to show you how mindset [00:30:00] interventions often work. So anyway, I digress. Take some time to think about that.

And if you’re a coach, what are your clients saying to you about stress? And imagine how much better their progress might be and how much better able they would be to just stick to the plan if they saw stress in a better, more enhancing way. And just be more growth mindset oriented about stress. And I think all of you can obviously think about this for yourself to think about it for yourself, think about it for your clients, maybe some people important people in your life that you have noticed like stress really gets the best of them.

What would be the downstream effects if they were able to shift their mindset around that and start to see it as something that’s actually adding to their life more beneficial to their lives? This is exactly what we teach inside the health mindset coaching certification for coaches to essentially.

Learn how [00:31:00] to help their clients not just manage their stress better, but shift their mindset around stress because as we just saw, that really can make a huge impact in everything else that you do. So last little mindset thing that I’m going to leave with you. That can really help. Some stuff that I have used with clients over the years, um, I use with my mentorship clients currently.

Especially because my mentorship clients were working on business, were working on client relationships, money mindset. All of the things. This stuff comes up a lot. When you think about it, Nervousness, feeling excited, feeling stressed, feeling anxious, all of these things, even though something like excited compared to anxious you would think are very, very different.

They actually have a lot of the exact same [00:32:00] physical symptoms. So you might have like an increased heart rate, you may not be able to sit still, you’re, you might not be able to think about anything else except for the situation at hand, even though we would say like just looking at anxiousness and excitedness.

That is a word right? These two things like anxiousness you would probably label as like not very good and excited ness. That’s really not, I don’t think that’s a word. You would see as like something that’s it’s usually pretty good, you know, positive valence, negative valence. But both of them are essentially just a state of arousal and like not that kind of arousal, okay?

Don’t, don’t come in here with your dirty minds. But if we can start to understand that these quote unquote entirely different types of emotions, being excited, being anxious, are actually, we’re actually presenting the exact same symptoms, then it can really help you start [00:33:00] to reframe what these things are in the first place.

Like maybe being stressed and anxious aren’t that bad after all, if when I’m excited I feel the exact same way. So is there a way where we can. Start to reframe how we see these things, and instead of, you know, going to give a big presentation at work, the public speaking thing, you know, um, instead of feeling like, oh my gosh, I’m so anxious, I’m so stressed about this, it’s like, no, no, no, no, no, no, maybe, Just maybe.

This is your body just gearing you up. It’s preparing you for the challenge. It’s getting you ready. It’s doing all the things that it’s supposed to do. And you just need to lean in and get ready to accept the challenge and do your best and do what you prepared for. Yeah, I know, like, easier said than done, right?

When you really think about it, when you’re really excited about something and you’re really anxious about something, it feels the fucking same. [00:34:00] And the more you can like wrap your head around that and go, wow, like, please don’t start trying to make things that you’re excited about and reframe that to like, oh, maybe I’m actually just anxious.

Don’t go that direction. We don’t want to go that direction, but we can certainly try to go the other direction. Your body is expressing it all the same way. Which means we know it’s just your head, your mindset that we need to work on. So how can you start to reframe and start to see it maybe as something that is more enhancing, because it’s only going to enhance your life.