Adopt the "stress-is-enhancing" mindset

Believing stress responses are helpful — not harmful — moderates the health costs of the threat response.

Why it works

Alia Crum’s mindset research showed that individuals who believe stress is enhancing show different physiological and behavioral outcomes from those who believe stress is debilitating, even controlling for objective stress levels. The mechanism is partly through challenge vs. threat appraisal: a stress-is-enhancing mindset increases the likelihood of resource-oriented (challenge) rather than threat-oriented appraisal of stressors. This is not denial of stress — it is reframing the meaning of the stress response itself.

How to do it

1. Learn the actual physiology of the stress response: cortisol aids memory consolidation; adrenaline increases focus and energy; the cardiovascular changes mobilize resources. This is not "it’s fine" — it is accurate.
2. When noticing stress, replace the reflexive evaluation ("this stress is hurting me") with a more accurate one: "this is my system preparing."
3. Build a personal reference of times when stress activated performance — recall these before high-stakes events as evidence for the enhancing narrative.

Evidence

Crum, Salovey & Achor demonstrated that a stress-is-enhancing mindset was associated with better performance and lower health symptoms even under equivalent stress loads. This aligns with and extends Blascovich’s challenge-threat model by targeting the meta-level belief about stress itself. (observational)

Mindset effects are moderate in size and may be more effective for moderate stress than for severe or chronic stressors where the physiological costs are genuinely high.

Sources

• Crum, Salovey & Achor (2013), Rethinking stress: The role of mindsets in determining the stress response, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Common mistake

Interpreting "stress is enhancing" as a command to ignore stress signals or to always welcome more stress — the claim is that the response itself is not inherently harmful, not that unlimited stress is fine.