Rise to the challenge.

This cat was inspired by a useful article about stress: How Harnessing the Positive Side of Stress Can Change Student Mindsets by Katrina Schwartz. See a long quote from the article below:

Rise to the challenge.

(cheezburger)

quote from the article; "McGonigal" is Kelly McGonigal, a health psychologist and lecturer at Stanford University.

An easy intervention to help students build a growth mindset about stressful situations is to break into small groups and share stories of facing challenges and persevering through them. The stories don’t have to be academic, but it should be a time when the student got better at that skill or learned something. Then students can write about the strengths they drew on, reflect on who or what supported them, and think about what they learned and how they grew. This is particularly powerful when adults share, too.

Sharing with a group can help students see that struggle is common to everyone. It can also help highlight different strategies people used in those moments of adversity and how productive challenges can be.

“The most effective mindset interventions start with a new idea, some science, and then you have people talk about it,” McGonigal said. When students can relate the idea to their own experiences, it becomes much more powerful.

“When we are anxious, stop interpreting it as a sign we are inadequate and start seeing it as a way we can rise to the challenge,” McGonigal said.

We all struggle.

This cat was inspired by a useful article about stress: How Harnessing the Positive Side of Stress Can Change Student Mindsets by Katrina Schwartz.

Quote from the article; "McGonigal" is Kelly McGonigal, a health psychologist and lecturer at Stanford University.

“If you are able to look back on your life and tell yourself a story about your stress that includes how you learned from it, it continues to create a narrative of strength, learning and growth,” McGonigal said.
An easy intervention to help students build a growth mindset about stressful situations is to break into small groups and share stories of facing challenges and persevering through them. The stories don’t have to be academic, but it should be a time when the student got better at that skill or learned something. Then students can write about the strengths they drew on, reflect on who or what supported them, and think about what they learned and how they grew. This is particularly powerful when adults share, too.
Sharing with a group can help students see that struggle is common to everyone. It can also help highlight different strategies people used in those moments of adversity and how productive challenges can be.

We all struggle.

(image is from cheezburger)

Connect with others to reduce stress.

This cat was inspired by a useful article about stress: How Harnessing the Positive Side of Stress Can Change Student Mindsets by Katrina Schwartz.

Growth and other challenges can sometimes lead to stress, but there are ways to cope! This advice comes from the first item in Katrina Schwartz's article; read more:

1. Caring for others builds resiliency against stress. To help people reset their mindsets about stress, encourage them to care for others. The biological reaction to stress naturally includes a desire to connect with others. Nurturing that inclination can dramatically reduce the harmful negative effects of stress.

Connect with others to reduce stress.

(cheezburger)

Empathy reduces stress.

This cat was inspired by a useful article about stress: How Harnessing the Positive Side of Stress Can Change Student Mindsets by Katrina Schwartz. Reducing stress and connecting with others are both great ways to grow your awareness and learn about the world.

Specifically, today's meme is from the first recommendation in the article:

#1 Caring for others builds resiliency against stress. To help people reset their mindsets about stress, encourage them to care for others. The biological reaction to stress naturally includes a desire to connect with others. Nurturing that inclination can dramatically reduce the harmful negative effects of stress.

The other recommendations in the article are good too: #2 Purpose in life reduces stress ... #3 Focus on how stress can help students grow. Read the article for details! Here are some more cats inspired by Katrina Schwartz's article.

Empathy reduces stress.

(cheezburger)

English: Let the stress energize you.

This cat was inspired by a useful article about stress: How Harnessing the Positive Side of Stress Can Change Student Mindsets by Katrina Schwartz.

Let the stress energize you.

Quote from the article; "McGonigal" is Kelly McGonigal, a health psychologist and lecturer at Stanford University.

McGonigal defines stress as “what arises in your body, in your brain and in your community when something you care about is at stake.” She acknowledges that stress can make some people feel paralyzed and might lead them to underperform. She calls that reaction a “threat response” to stress, but says if educators can help students to have a “challenge response” to stress, which includes the realization that they have the resources to handle the situation, the stress can actually energize students to do better.
This more positive approach doesn’t negate the very real effects on the brain from constant high levels of stress. McGonigal is clear that the first priority in any situation is to relieve suffering. She says it’s useful to help students learn tactics to calm down in the moment, like mindfulness or other cortisol-reduction exercises, but those strategies aren’t enough on their own. Life is stressful in big and small ways; rather than trying to erase stress from life, it may be beneficial to approach inevitable stress more positively.
“There is almost no relationship between the amount of stress you are under and your stress mindset,” said McGonigal. Learning tactics to change one’s outlook on stress can be beneficial for anyone. “How you think about stress seems to influence how you cope with stress,” she said.

(image is from cheezburger)