Original post
"Dr. Kelly McGonigal is author of the book The Upside of Stress, so it's fitting she's here on Big Think chatting about... well... the upside of stress. McGonigal reveals that the body responds to stress in more ways than just fight or flight. Those two approaches stem from a threat response. Anxiety sits in and dictates your emotional state. Fight and flight thus tend to be detrimental to success. We perform much better in stressful situations when we enter what is called a challenge response. Instead of panic or recklessness, our brains maximize focus so that we perform at our best. The key to making stress an asset is to train the brain into forgoing threat response in favor of challenge response."