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Productive Stress

Overcoming Fear: Lessons from Public Speaking

Public speaking can be terrifying. It’s you, standing up in front of a bunch of people, all eyes locked on what you are about to say and do. There’s no hiding behind teammates, no passing the ball to someone else, not even a helmet with a face mask. Just you, alone on stage, trying your…

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Why We See Threats Everywhere

Go for a walk around your neighborhood during the day. Are you constantly stressed, on the lookout for potential danger around you? For many of us (though certainly not all), we can mindlessly walk the sidewalks, daydreaming as we mosey along. Now, move yourself to an unknown city, in the middle of the night. Are…

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Feeling Stressed? Zoom Out.

What do you do when it feels like it’s all going wrong? When your mind spirals towards negativity, when your thoughts get locked into a pattern of rumination and catastrophizing, when you get stuck in inaction, ready to hit the eject button on the speech you are about to give, the race you are running,…

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Knowing When You Are Ready To Rise to the Occasion

In 1985, Neil Gaiman was a twenty-five-year-old writer with a smattering of fantasy stories, magazine articles, and two books to his name. They weren’t glaring successes. One book was a collection of quotes. The other, a biography of the pop group Duran Duran, a work that he later admitted he wrote solely for the money…

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