We live in a world of mental health sensitivity. Where avoiding stress is celebrated.

(In some ways this is good and needed.)

I think we may have gone too far with it. The Greeks had multiple words for stress. One of them is “Eustress”:

That is, stress that is good. Stress that makes you grow. Lifting weights is a simple example of this.

The secret, I’ve learned, is that how we frame a situation will often determine what type of stress you will experience.

Let me tell you how I saw this last week:

I have a training partner who my coach thretened to kick out of the gym if he didn’t improve. (This is a paying customer he’d be firing, so not something taken lightly.) And you know what? My training partner got better immediately. He told me that coaches comment stresed him out, he was thinking about it on the drive in each day. But he leveled up nontheless.

I’ve also seen people approach demanding coworkers with one of two mindsets:

1. This person has high expectations, I will meet them, this will make me better.
2. This person is hard to work with.

The former frames the same situation as eustress.

Expectations and how you frame things mentally will determine whether you are the proverbial egg or potato.

That is for each person to decide.

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P.S.

Here is the last time I wrote about this topic.