Stress is woven into the human experience.
As we get older, it is expected that we will have more challenges and hardships, not just health concerns, such as relationships, career, and child-rearing. Add to that the fear of big events beyond our control, from climate change to ugly political polarization and global conflict. it’s all possible a lot.
However, how you deal with stress is the key to your growth.
It turns out there are some simple strategies that can help reduce anxiety and increase positive emotions. And there’s a lot of science showing they work.
You can think of these strategies as skills that you can practice and get better at. And this may help you cope better with difficult times.
If you want to build resilient muscles, subscribe NPR’s stressless Newsletter series. Over five weeks, we’ll introduce you to powerful tools and strategies that are proven to help people reduce anxiety and increase their sense of well-being.
Learn skills such as positive reappraisal, mindfulness, and self-compassion, along with insights into the science of stress from leading experts in the fields of psychology and neuroscience.
Stressless: The quest to regain calm Opens September 30th. If you are facing a stressful situation, big or small, we invite you to join us. Here’s how to register:
Special Occasion: Attend a Resilience Masterclass
NPR has teamed up with Northwestern University to bring online stress reduction courses and research to our viewers.
stressless This course is based on the research of Judith Moskowitz, a research psychologist at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine who created the course. Teach 8 skills to increase positive emotions.
The study builds on more than 20 years of her research studying people who have experienced extremely difficult situations, such as women with stage 4 breast cancer and people caring for loved ones with Alzheimer’s disease. Her peer-reviewed research points to benefits.
Her research shows that people who learn and practice these skills report feeling more joy and less anxiety, even during difficult times.
“We’ve built a pretty large body of research showing that these skills are effective for everyone, regardless of the type of stress they’re experiencing,” Moskowitz says.
By signing up, you will be participating in an online research study led by Dr. Moskowitz. You will complete a survey before and after the course to measure your own anxiety and positive emotion levels. This course is available for free.
Learning these skills takes practice. Typically, people spend about 10 to 15 minutes each week learning a skill and several hours a day practicing it.
Join the quest!
Click here to sign up Take Northwestern’s online resilience courses and participate in research studies.
Click here to join NPR’s less stress, 5 week newsletter series, Get science-backed tools to deal with stress delivered to your inbox.
The Stress Less series is edited by Jane Greenhalgh and Carmel Wroth.
