You're listening to Life Kit from NPR.

Hey everybody, it's Mariel.

Hurricane Milton has just landed on the coast of Florida.

Meanwhile, folks in Florida and other states are still dealing with the devastation of Hurricane

Helene, a category 4 storm that killed hundreds of people and swept away entire homes.

It's understandable in moments like these to feel powerless and filled with dread,

to feel burned out. That's true when it comes to big natural disasters, but also smaller events,

like rainstorms, can bring on feelings like this too.

It's important that we try to hold on to optimism, and a new course at the University of California is helping

students do that. The course is called climate resilience transforming climate

to stress to action. The students meet scientists and leaders in the climate

movement and do a series of exercises to help shift their mindsets and become more hopeful.

On this episode of Life Kit, you're going to learn some of what those students have.

This is part two of

NPR correspondent Allison Aubrey's Stress Less Series. She'll walk you through

some of the exercises from the course and talk about how you can stay energized

even in the face of destruction and disaster so you can advocate

for causes that you care about. There's also a lot here that could be helpful to

anyone who needs a stress reboot. Oh, Imagine something you love.

Then imagine that thing is threatened.

Jada Alexander knows that feeling.

As a student at UC Santa Barbara, she went on a research trip to study coral reef in French Polynesia.

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