The Upside of Stress

In her TED video "How to Make Stress Your Friend," Kelly McGonigal shares how the belief that stress may be as bad for you as the stress itself. McGonigal presents research on the subject and a few ways to change how you think about stress to make you healthier.

Stress  (Leading in the Wildland Fire Service, p. 47)

Representing a significant risk to safety and operational effectiveness, stress can bring about reactions such as tunnel vision or confusion that substantially degrade situation awareness—in ourselves and in our people.

To mitigate this risk, leaders act to alleviate the effects of stress by:

• Understanding our own stress reactions—the triggers that set them off, the symptoms, the mitigations to put into place to reduce them. 
• Monitoring and preventing stress buildup in their teams—openly discussing the causes of stress and the potential mitigations. 
• Encouraging team members to watch out for each other by monitoring one another’s stress reactions.

Additional information about the research can be found on TED Blog.

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A special thanks to Jeff Arnberger, BLM Fire Operations, for bringing this video to our attention.

If you have a video or article to share, send the link to BLM_FA_Leadership_Feedback@blm.gov.