Turn a Little Stress into Your Secret Weapon
Most of us think stress is a bad thing. But the right dose of pressure can help us perform at our best if we learn to harness it.
“If you have stage fright, it never goes away. But then I wonder: is the key to that magical performance because of the fear?” — Stevie Nicks, Rolling Stone’s “Reigning Queen of Rock and Roll
Seasoned performers from Beyonce to Barbra Streisand to Stevie Nicks often report that they still get stage fright. They feel the typical symptoms like sweaty palms and a weak stomach, but they get on stage and rock the venue anyway. And as Nicks points out, maybe that dread has something to do with the smashing performance that follows. “Many comedians and performers worry if they don’t feel that edge of anxiety before a performance,” says Ian Robertson, a cognitive neuroscientist at Trinity College Dublin. “Tiger Woods says if he doesn’t feel anxious before a match, he knows he’s going to do badly.”
Is it possible that a little stress can be good? We tend to know about stress as a bad thing, and it is when it’s overwhelming or chronic. It can increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, suppress the immune system, influence fertility, and impair thinking.
But researchers like Daniela Kaufer and Elizabeth Kirby of UC Berkeley’s Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute have found that a moderate, manageable amounts of stress can improve our memory and cognitive functioning. Check out a few ways scientists suggest to harness the positive power of stress when it feels like it might get out of hand.
Reframe stress in heated moments
Let’s say you feel stressed before you step onstage for your sold-out concert … or, if you’re not a rockstar, before your math final or team presentation. Try to reframe stress as excitement. They share similar symptoms, after all, with sweaty palms and an elevated heart rate.
It’s possible to make a mental switch by telling yourself things like, “I’m so excited” or “get excited!” Research from Harvard Business School shows that this technique of reframing stress as excitement actually has a better effect on performance than trying to “calm down.”
Similarly, UCSF’s Laurel Mellin is researching our ability to retrain our own stress responses when we’re in a heated situation. She asserts that stressful events become coded into our neural circuitry and stay there until we address them. (For example, we might ask our crush on a date on Valentine’s day, and if they say no, we may internalize a message that “I’m not good enough.”)
Mellin we should think of our problems as “circuits” instead of “problems” and says that unhelpful circuits can be rewired, especially right after stressful situations when they’re activated. She developed a set of techniques to help people reframe situations, express emotions, rein in overreactions, and gain perspective about difficult moments.
Yes, self-calming actually works
There are plenty of self-calming techniques, like meditation, coloring books, walking in nature, visualizations, laughing, socializing, and more. And a new neurofeedback study from Tel Aviv University demonstrates how effective self-calming can be, even when you’re stuck in a research chair and all you’ve got is your own mind to keep you company.
In the study, researchers hooked participants to EEG readers that measured electrical activity in their amygdala, an ancient emotional center of the brain. The participants were told to try to reduce amygdala activity through any mental stress coping strategies they chose, and meanwhile, they were able to get real-time feedback on the electrical activity in their amygdala.
It was demonstrated that this feedback loop helped participants manage their emotions. “We have long known that there might be ways to tune down the amygdala through biofeedback, meditation, or even the effects of placebos,” said John Krystal, Editor of Biological Psychiatry. “It is an exciting idea that perhaps direct feedback on the level of activity of the amygdala can be used to help people gain control of their emotional responses.” (To learn more about how neurofeedback works, check out our recent Peak overview.)
So rest assured: you have more influence over your stress than you might think. And if you can harness it in the right situations, it can even give you that extra kick to perform at your best.
