Embracing Eustress: When Stress Becomes Your Secret Advantage

In our pursuit of stress reduction, we've overlooked a powerful truth: not all stress harms us. The workplace wellness conversation often focuses exclusively on eliminating pressure, but what if some stress actually fuels our growth?

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Do you know what eustress is? About 90% of people say no when I ask them in my wellbeing workshops. And I think that's part of the problem. We talk about stress all the time, but this important part of the conversation is being left out. Eustress means good stress. It's when we're pushed just outside of our comfort zone and we're challenged and we have to rise to the occasion, but we're not quite overwhelmed. So think about when you're using a new skill at work, or maybe you have that big presentation And you feel confident about doing it, but you still have to really be on for it. Those are those times when we grow personally, we grow professionally, and we need those. It's part of the human experience. When we think about employee well-being, we think about stress management, we need to acknowledge this big piece of the puzzle. And for the other piece, we can talk about strategies and tools that help tell our brains and our bodies that they're safe when they might be telling us otherwise.