Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle

If you want to try using this principle rationally, all you have to do is write four lists: What are the benefits of continuing? What are the benefits of stopping? What are the costs of continuing? What are the costs of stopping?

Struggle can increase creativity and learning, strengthen your capacity to cope with greater difficulties in the future, and empower you to continue working toward goals that matter to you. Reappraisal even changes our brain functioning: The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex activates, which damps the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which damps the am

Maybe you’re sick all the time: you have chronic pain, injuries that just won’t heal, or infections that keep coming back. Because stress is not “just stress,” but a biological event that really happens inside your body, it can cause biological problems that really happen inside your body but can’t always be explained with obvious diagnoses. Chroni

If you’re hiding from your life, you’re past your threshold. You aren’t dealing with either the stress or the stressor. Deal with the stress so you can be well enough to deal with the stressor.

The problem is that the strategies that deal with stressors have almost no relationship to the strategies that deal with the physiological reactions our bodies have to those stressors.

Positive reappraisal involves recognizing that sitting in traffic is worth it. It means deciding that the effort, the discomfort, the frustration, the unanticipated obstacles, and even the repeated failure have value—not just because they are steps toward a worthwhile goal, but because you reframe difficulties as opportunities for growth and learni

With positive reappraisal, you can acknowledge when things are difficult, and you recognize that the difficulty is worth it—it is, in fact, an opportunity.

Stress is not bad for you; being stuck is bad for you. Wellness happens when your body is a place of safety for you, even when your body is not necessarily in a safe place.

Just Because You’ve Dealt with the Stressor Doesn’t Mean You’ve Dealt with the Stress Itself