When you hear the word ‘stress’, what do you think of? If you’re anything like us, the word likely comes hand-in-hand with a lot of negative connotations: burnout, anxiety, fear… the list goes on.

But what if we stopped viewing stress as a big, scary, terrible thing? What if we started to look at it as something that can be positive (in small doses, of course)?

Dr Elissa Epel, a psychologist and the author of The Seven-Day Stress Prescription, believes we should do just that – and the science backs her up.

In one study, students were taught to view their stress response as something that could help them perform better in an exam. When they started to view stress as helpful, rather than harmful, their performance improved. In research by Dr Alia Crum at Stanford, meanwhile, it was found that if you present people with information about the harmful effects of stress, they perform worse in tests. If you tell them about the benefits of stress, they do better.

“When we focus on the benefits of stress, we feel less stress about stress, pay attention to positive cues rather than threatening cues and approach situations more confidently rather than avoid them,” writes Epel. “With positive stress beliefs, people feel more engaged in their work, more positive emotions and less physiological reactivity. What you’re telling yourself matters.”

The key is not to pretend that stress is always a wonderful thing and that we’d love to feel it all the time… that’s just not realistic. But instead, we can start to view stressful moments as a challenge, rather than something to be feared. In other words, we can approach stress like a lion, not a gazelle.

Why you need to approach stress like a lion, not a gazelle