Welcome to Darren Daly on demand, your most trusted resource to help you become better every day.

Here's your success mentor, Darren Hardy.

Stress is a head game. It's an illusion of the mind. Oh, I get that you feel stress. You feel the tension in your body.

Your nervous system releases adrenaline hormones, which increases your heart rate, your blood pressure,

it shallows your breathing. Yeah, all that's actually for real. But the trigger, that was mental.

A perception, one that was made up in your mind. What is stressful to one person

is not to another. Speaking on stage, making sales calls, solo climbing half dome without ropes,

surfing Maverick waves, jumping out of a plane, driving a NASCAR, flying a helicopter,

whatever. The difference isn't the thing itself. It's only the

perception of the person doing it. The dominant cultural view says stress is bad for you,

but that is wrong. And it is leading people to regulate their goals and seek avenues to reduce

or avoid stress. This is bad because the opposite is true. In fact, stress is good for you.

It is a tool for performance optimization. Tons of research now links the experience of stress

with beneficial outcomes. For instance, studies have linked stress with personal initiative and

productivity as well as, quote, psychological thriving. Even intense stress

experiences triggered by life-threatening events can have positive outcomes, including improved

relationships, greater appreciation for life, and enhanced perceptions of strength, and a phenomenon

known as, quote, post-traumatic growth. Some of our most treasured and meaningful experiences involve

stress, achieving a great goal, excelling in one's career, engaging in deep, intimate relationships,

or even raising children. Think about it. If you reflect on the times in your life when you have

learned, grown substantially or performed at exceptionally high levels,

you'll notice those times were probably also deeply stressful. It is not stress that you should

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