Implement a three-step approach to stress: 1) Acknowledge you are stressed, 2) Welcome the stress by recognizing it signifies something you care about, and 3) Utilize the stress response to achieve your goals, rather than trying to eliminate the stress itself.
Clarify your definition of stress by understanding it as a neutral response to experiencing or anticipating adversity in your goal-related efforts, recognizing that stress only arises from things you care about.
Bring your current mindsets, especially about stress, into conscious awareness to evaluate if they are serving you, and actively work to reprogram them if needed, understanding they act as a default setting influencing subconscious processes.
Adopt a ‘stress is enhancing’ mindset, focusing on how stress can grow you and bring out your best, as this can lead to fewer physical symptoms of stress and improved performance compared to a ‘stress will crush you’ mindset.
When stressed, shift your motivation from trying to eliminate stress to utilizing it to achieve enhancing outcomes, such as learning, growth, strengthening relationships, or clarifying priorities, rather than freaking out or checking out.
When eating, especially for weight management, adopt a mindset that you are eating indulgently and sufficiently, as this can lead to more adaptive physiological responses like a stronger drop in ghrelin levels, signaling satiety.
If you are physically active but don’t perceive it as exercise, reframe your mindset to acknowledge your activity as beneficial exercise, as this can lead to physiological health improvements like weight loss and reduced blood pressure without changing behavior.
Adopt the mindset that your intelligence and abilities are malleable and can grow and change, which will motivate you to work harder and improve in various domains.
Be aware that negative beliefs or expectations about treatments or situations (the nocebo effect) can cause you to experience those negative consequences, such as side effects, even if objectively unwarranted.
Be mindful of your beliefs about your diet and the social context surrounding it, as these mindsets interact with your physiology to produce important health outcomes, regardless of the specific diet chosen.
Treat yourself like a scientist by regularly examining your life and mindsets, identifying which ones are beneficial or detrimental, and consciously cultivating more useful, adaptive, and empowering beliefs.
Actively seek ways to consciously and deliberately leverage the placebo effect in medicine and daily life, recognizing the significant power of mindsets to influence physiological outcomes.