Use stress as a tool to boost your performance, mental health, resilience and relationships

Stress is your body and brain’s response to when you believe something you care about is at stake. This means stress can be a valuable tool to help you live out your values, accomplish your goals, strengthen your relationships, and grow and learn from adversity. Yet we often allow stress to get in the way of accomplishing our goals. Save the graphic below as a daily reminder to use your stress response to help you accomplish your most meaningful goals.

To learn more about how you can use stress for good, read HPRC’s article Make Stress Good For You.

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Stress as a tool

Use stress as a tool to boost your performance, mental health, resilience, and relationships.

Stress is your body and brain trying to give you the energy, focus, and motivation to address what is most meaningful to you.

Use one or more of these prompts daily to set up your body and mind for success and to optimize your stress response.

  • What values do you want to live out today? How can your stress response help you?
  • What goals do you want to accomplish today? How can your stress response help you?
  • Who are the people you want to care for today? How can your stress response help you?
  • What adversities might you face today? How can your stress response help you?

 

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CHAMP logo: Consortium for Health and Military Performance

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Website: HPRC-online.org

Published on: May 3, 2022


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References

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Chang, B.-H., Dusek, J. A., & Benson, H. (2011). Psychobiological changes from relaxation response elicitation: long-term practitioners vs. novices. Psychosomatics, 52(6), 550–559. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psym.2011.05.001

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Smith, E. N., Young, M. D., & Crum, A. J. (2020). Stress, Mindsets, and Success in Navy SEALs Special Warfare Training. Frontiers in Psychology, 10. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02962