The Good Side of Stress

Last week I watched a video that helped me understand some very interesting things. It was a talk by the psychologist Kelly McGonigal of Stanford University, entitled “How to Make Stress Your Friend.” She shows, scientifically, how stress works.

The psychologist begins by saying that for the previous ten years of her professional life she had been telling people that stress was bad for their health; but as she continued her research, she realized that stress is not what she thought.

With that talk I understood, at last, why there are so many of us in Venezuela who live happily despite the accumulated stress we are used to experiencing every day. I understood, at last, why so much stress does not take away the immense happiness we feel each night when we go to bed “squeezed dry like a lemon” after a day in which we did what we had to do to contribute, with integrity (each in our own sphere: family, school, community, business), to our country’s reaching a dignified future for all.

Throughout her talk, the psychologist cites several studies that shed new light on the stress response, showing how, if we change the way we think about stress, it becomes healthier. That means that if we cannot reduce it, we can at least keep it from killing us with a heart attack, and stay Happy!

She presents a study that followed groups of people experiencing varying degrees of stress over several years, and then shows the death figures. Those who believed stress could kill them died at a much higher rate; but she points out that the people under the most stress who did not believe in, or know about, its “negative” effects were actually healthier and more likely to live a long and happy life.

Another fact she presents is that stress releases the hormone oxytocin. This hormone is released when we have physical connection with people; it is sometimes called the happiness hormone. The psychologist presents research on about a thousand adults that looked at how they described their level of stress and how much time they spent helping others, whether friends, relatives or members of their community.

The results were as follows: every stressful life experience, such as financial difficulties or a family crisis, increased the risk of dying by 30%. But people with many problems and much stress who spent a lot of time caring for or helping others (and therefore releasing oxytocin) showed no increase in the risk of dying.

All I can tell you is that in nearly thirty years of working with, and getting to know, many people from the Church and from associations and foundations in this country, I have seen firsthand people who are going through countless problems, work and stress, yet still help in their communities.

What these people have in common is that they are always cheerful and ready to pitch in (even if they are going through hell). They are “alive and kicking,” even though they don’t enjoy the much-vaunted “quality of life” they keep trying to sell us.

Another psychologist I heard a year ago said that “the term quality of life has made people individualistic and selfish, because they think having quality of life means not complicating your life.”

Well, the people I have known who have complicated their lives a great deal to help others, because that is what they chose, live with great energy and are very happy. They also show an addiction to what they do. I ask: could that addiction be a result of the oxytocin they produce when they help others, which brings so much happiness? Now I understand why many of these people, when they leave Venezuela for a few days, count the hours until they can come back and be with, and help, their fellow Venezuelans.

I am very grateful to whoever sent me that video, and grateful to this psychologist, who has led me to confirm, now scientifically, that whoever lives to serve (even at the cost of sacrificing their “quality of life”) lives Happily, and for many years. This is a new incentive to keep going, fulfilling our mission of working and contributing all we can so that this wonderful Land of Grace, where God willed us to be born, may become a country with Freedom, Truth, Justice and Peace for all.

I also take this opportunity to thank the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans in every corner of our homeland who are working silently and tirelessly, with their good stress, for a better country for all. According to this psychologist, you will have a long and stressful life, but a Very Happy one, because you are doing what you must do, not to serve yourselves, but to serve others.