How to Make Stress Work for You

Overview

Join a fitness consultant and popular instructor for a fascinating look at how to finally control your stress.

Trying to live a completely stress-free life is a zero-sum game. The true goal of your relationship with stress is to figure out how to manage it effectively; how to use it to build and support a meaningful, resilient life. In these 18 enriching and inspiring lectures, discover how to manage and minimize the stress in your life. You’ll explore the nuances of stress in ways you never really considered. These include types of stress (such as traumas, moderate stressors, and activities of daily life) and the idea that what you experience in life is really just your brain’s response (using memory and reasoning) to raw input and stimuli. You’ll also explore the relationship between emotion and stress, including the idea that expressing your rage could actually be making you angrier. Dr. Bonura fills these lectures with scientifically-backed techniques, behavior modifications, and exercises you can use to build a personalized toolkit to better manage your stress response. You’ll learn about responsible detachment from stressful situations, the importance of ruminating right after a traumatic event, the ways physical affection helps with healing, and much more. Rooted in scientific findings from experiments, research papers, and case studies, these lectures offer you nothing less than a bold new way of facing (and appreciating) daily life.

Course Structure

1. A New Mindset about Stress
   Start the course with a reversal of common perspective: that stress is actually correlated with having a sense of meaning in your life. Along the way, learn a more holistic definition of stress, explore the idea of a stress continuum, and learn the difference between major traumas and everyday irritants. (32 min)
2. Happiness: A Fickle Queen
   We place so much emphasis on pursuing happiness that it often makes us less likely to be happy. Examine the relationship between happiness and play, why gratitude lists make you more resilient to stress, and how to train your mind to pay attention to the right kind of happiness. (34 min)
3. Anger: A Tyrannical King
   Expressing anger is the best way to overcome it, right? Wrong. Learn how the cognitive neoassociation theory explains why acting out on anger actually makes you angrier. Then, learn how to let go of anger through helpful counting exercises and detachment. (35 min)
4. Swimming in an Ocean of Sorrow
   Suffering, pain, grief-how do we recover and rebuild in the wake of major trauma? Find out in this lecture on sorrow-related stress that explores our ever-shifting perceptions of trauma and why simply acknowledging your vulnerability can be a vital aid. (32 min)
5. Why You Stress: Arousal and Value Judgment
   Arousal plus your value judgment equals your stress level. Explore this idea in a lecture that recasts the stress continuum as a positive-negative curve instead of a line. (32 min)
6. Choose Your Adventure: Choose Your Stress
   What does learned helplessness tell us about our sense of control? Is too much choice more stressful than fewer choices? Learn how to make better decisions under stress. (29 min)
7. Heaven and Hell Can Be Other People
   Social situations can be stressful. Learn the role social media plays in our view of relationships and appreciate the healing power of physical touch. (32 min)
8. Our Overstressed, Overscheduled Kids
   Discover strategies for helping kids overcome stress in a hectic modern lifestyle. (35 min)
9. Change Your Mind to Change Your Stress
   Dr. Bonura teaches the nuances of cognitive restructuring to help you reframe your thoughts and manage fears. (31 min)
10. Emergency Stress Management
    Get a powerful toolkit for dealing with life-and-death stress situations while cultivating long-term stress management. (31 min)
11. Good Stress Helps You Handle All Stress
    Learn why stress can be beneficial and how it strengthens resilience. (31 min)
12. The Stress of Learning and Mastery
    Explore effective strategies for cultivating competence at work and learn about the “imposter syndrome.” (32 min)
13. Alternative Approaches to Stress
    Dr. Bonura introduces a range of alternative care strategies for stress management. (32 min)
14. Mindfulness: Heart Healing to Manage Stress
    Learn how to leverage mindfulness as a tool and practice for a more positive relationship with stress. (34 min)
15. Channeling Stress for a Competitive Edge
    Discover how to repurpose performance stress as excitement and improve performance in stressful situations. (29 min)
16. Emerging Stress Management Technology
    Explore techniques for stress management based on up-to-date scientific understanding. (34 min)
17. Rest, Restore, Recover Your Resilience
    Appreciate the benefits of relaxation and explore stress-reduction strategies. (31 min)
18. Learning from Your Stress
    Dr. Bonura shares skills to help you learn from stress and appreciate the small things. (34 min)