Penny Zenker “Fear is Like Our Kryptonite.”

Stress is bad for you.

Well, that kinda goes without saying, I know.

Only thing is, it’s not true. What the research is showing is that it’s not the stress itself that breaks us down, but rather how we think about stress.

In other words, if you THINK and believe stress will wreck your body and send you to an early grave, it no doubt will.

Yeah, you may have heard me talk about this one before — how my whole mindset around stress was turned upside down when I read Dr. Kelly McGonigal’s book, The Upside of Stress. Yet it’s a concept worth repeating.

The truth is, people who don’t perceive stress through a lens of negativity have no greater risk of dying prematurely than those with very little or no stress. Crazy, huh?

It’s our thoughts and expectations about things that shape our experiences. I mean, we’ve all heard about those drug trials showing sugar pills to be as powerful as the drug. Think the pill will make you feel better and it will, whether it’s real or fake.

Or maybe a particular food or ingredient all of a sudden made you feel horrible after reading a handful of convincingly terrifying “This Healthy Food May Be Killing You” blog posts about it. Now, green apples, or more precisely the fear of green apples, are giving you headaches.

What I’m getting at here is that we have a choice as to how we direct our energy. And if everything is energy, we can shape our experiences, including our lifespans and general health, simply by how we think about things.

I don’t know about you, but I think that’s the coolest thing ever.

Today on the podcast, Penny Zenker keeps this topic going as she shows you how to move past fear, self-sabotage, and resistance by choosing to consciously redirect your thoughts. It’s a good one. Enjoy!

Penny’s book, The Productivity Zone: Stop the Tug of War with Time, is available at QODBooks.com. You can find today’s full talk here.