Dr. Maya Shankar
Maya Shankar is a cognitive scientist who served as a Senior Advisor in the Obama White House, where she founded and served as Chair of the White House Behavioral Science…
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We’re all familiar with the ways that stress can make us feel bad. But professor and stress expert Modupe Akinola argues that a simple change in our mindset can turn short-term stress into a helpful resource. Modupe walks us through some strategies for how to better tolerate and understand our stress, and gives us tools for coping when a small “mindset shift” isn’t enough.
Modupe
Our dominant model and narrative is that we should deny, reduce and avoid stress, and that is not always the case. Every single person I know can tell of the time where their stress helped them.
Maya
That's Modupe Akinola, a professor at the Columbia Business School and an expert on stress. Modupe is on a mission to change how we think about short-term stress, the kind we feel when we're preparing for a big presentation at work or before a difficult conversation with a friend. She says we can reframe our stress as something that actually helps us.
Modupe
It's often your mindset about stress that can influence the extent to which it can have harmful or helpful effects. So when we have more of a stresses enhancing mindset, that leads to better outcomes.
Maya
On today's show, what science teaches us about the upside of stress. I'm Maya Shankar, and this is A Slight Change of Plans, a show about who we are and who we become, in the face of a big change.
It is easy for us to see stress as the enemy. In a stressful situation, our heart races, our blood pressure rises, our breathing quickens, and this can all feel pretty uncomfortable. If we could wave a magic wand that would eliminate all future stress from our lives, many of us would wave that wand. But Modupe believes that if we can make a small shift in our mindset, stress can actually be a powerful asset. So Modupe, can you start off by sharing what it is that got you interested in studying stress in the first place?
Modupe
Basically, I grew up as a child of immigrants and anyone who is a child of immigrants knows that there is just stress involved in that experience. The stress of moving to a new country, the stress of having kids, raising kids in a new environment, the stress of being far away from your family, if you've come from a developing country, being able to support your family while also trying to help your kids learn a new language here, all of that.
And so I realized later on in life that I had absorbed a lot of that stress. Heck, to this day, I still watch my parents stress and have to say to myself, "Wait a minute, pause, do all the things that I advise other people to do." So that is a piece of why I study stress. But also one of the things I love about my parents was that they were very education focused. And so the stress of doing well in school, not even just the pressure that they put on us, they didn't put much pressure on us. They just sent us to one of the best private schools possible and said, "You do you." But in that process, that meant that I experienced the stress of being one of few black people in every classroom I was in. So then there's this stress of adjusting and adapting to environments where you are the only, where you're different. So all of those things combined led to me eventually studying stress.
Maya
Yeah. There's this charming story, Modupe, about your high school yearbook and the fact that clearly you weren't the only one thinking that you were stressed out.
Modupe
Yes.
Maya
Can you tell us a bit about that?
Modupe
Yes. So you know in high school, usually you have a yearbook. And in our yearbook there are roasts. In those roasts, it highlights who you think you are and who you actually are. And my dream was that I was best dressed is what they said, but my reality was that I was the most stressed. So even senior year, even senior year, they saw that in me and I saw it in myself. But the thing about it is there were so many ways in which that stress helped me. It challenged me and it pushed me. So I kind of always felt like stress isn't always this terrible thing that we need to run away from and avoid and deny. Maybe it is helping us in some ways too.
Maya
So let's start with the basics. If you can give us kind of the stress 101. How do you define stress?
Modupe
I feel like the simplest definition is when the demands of a situation exceed your resources to cope. But you have to then take it a step further and say, "Well, what are demands?" And often, demands are there's some type of danger in this situation, there's some type of uncertainty. You need to exert a little bit of extra effort in this situation. Then, when you think about resources, well, what helps us overcome danger, uncertainty, extra effort we need to put into something. Well, when we have the knowledge and the abilities to tackle that thing, when our personalities, our dispositions can be helpful in tackling that thing. And also, when we have external support, other people cheering us on, other people teaching us, that's when we have more resources.
Maya
Yeah. What's interesting about this definition is that when it comes to stress, it's really about our subjective assessment that we have the resources to cope. So it might not be the objective resources. In fact, I might have the mental and physical resources to cope with the situation, but if my self-perception is that I don't have those resources, now all of a sudden, it is a stressful situation. So I would almost reframe the definition as feeling like the demands of the situation exceed your resources to cope. Is that right?
Modupe
Yeah. A lot of it is our subjective assessment of it, which is a piece of why I tell people don't say, "Don't be stressed. That shouldn't stress you out out." Because it doesn't matter, subjectively, I am feeling stress. So that's what needs to be taken into consideration, my subjective experience of it.
Maya
On a physiological level, can you tell us what happens to us when we experience stress?
Modupe
So when we experience stress, our sympathetic nervous system gets activated. It's that part of our body that tells us, do you need to fight or do you need to flee this situation? And when that happens, we get adrenaline, we get dopamine, we get cortisol, all of the resources we need physiologically to move, to act, to do what we need to do. This process is a very adaptive one, so that when you're done with the stressor, ideally your body wants to go back to its resting state where those hormones decrease, that adrenaline decreased, you get back to resting and relaxing and all that. That is a normal physiological response to an acute stressor.
Maya
I love your sharing that because stress obviously gets a really bad rep. But it's not just this random bad thing that our bodies experience. It exists in part because it is highly adaptive and there are many situations in which an active stress response helps us do what needs to be done. So in other words, you mentioned cortisol, dopamine, adrenaline. How do those translate into increased performance, increased acuity? Just help me build that bridge.
Modupe
So essentially your body is being taxed and your heart rate is increasing because again, you're getting ready. That cortisol is giving you the energy that you need to be attentive, to be focused to approach this situation. And when you have increased cortisol, you are attentive to threats. Often, in a good way. You're like waiting for what's happening. You're able to remember things in a different way. And so we need to remember when our bodies are acting, it's telling us you've got this, now let's use this. But one of the problems is when we can be overactivated and too attentive to threat and those levels of the dopamine, the cortisol, the adrenaline, all that, are staying elevated kind of chronically. And that is what leads to disease and all of these problems that we want to avoid physiologically. So that's kind of the stress cycle.
Maya
So now you've given us the lay of the land on the basics of stress.
Modupe
Yes.
Maya
One fascinating thing your research focuses on is that how we think about our own stress, our mindset and our attitude towards stress can actually change its impact on us.
Modupe
Yes.
Maya
Can you first walk us through the two types of mindsets that we can have towards stress?
Modupe
So the two types of mindsets are a mindset that stress is enhancing, it can help us in terms of our performance, our growth, our learning. The second piece is that stress is debilitating, it harms us in terms of our health and vitality and our performance and our growth and our learning. And it's often your mindset about stress that can influence the extent to which it can have harmful or helpful effects. So when we have more of a stress is enhancing mindset, that leads to better outcomes.
Maya
I love this research. I'm wondering if you can give me a couple of examples of how introducing this mindset shift was actually able to help performance in different contexts.
Modupe
So in one study, we had people just watch a video showing the many ways in which stress can be enhancing. You can imagine things like that stressful moment in a soccer game and somebody makes the goal. We can each think of times where we have risen to the occasion. When we show people these videos and then have them engage in a creative task, we find that they're more creative, we find that they're more attentive to positive things in the environment versus negative things in the environment. On the flip side, tell people or show them videos of when stress can be debilitating and you see the opposite. They're less creative and also generally more negative mood, more attentive to threats. So that's some of the research we've done.
Maya
Yeah. And I know that you work at a business school and you often think about psychology as it applies to organizational behavior, and you did some similar research when it comes to negotiators.
Modupe
Yes. So often, people are very stressed in the context of negotiation. So in this research, we basically just told people that a little bit of stress before negotiations is actually okay. So we had half the people we told that the other half, we didn't tell anything prior to negotiation. And we found that for women who experienced cortisol increases in the negotiation, so physiologically they were stressed, however, they were told a little bit of stress is okay in the negotiation, they outperformed those who were told nothing about stress being helpful for negotiations. So there's something about knowing that this is actually an okay thing, that when your body is having this response, that can lead to beneficial outcomes.
Maya
And one of the most fascinating insights is that our underlying physiology can change when we adopt a stress as enhancing mindset. So it's not just that I think more positive thoughts, it actually can affect our physiological response to stress at this underlying level.
Modupe
I think that that's absolutely right, that when you have an enhancing mindset, it can affect your body's response to stress. There has been research showing that the walls of your blood vessels rather than constricting, they're more likely to dilate with a stresses enhancing mindset. And the importance of the mind body connection is something I think we often forget. And our dominant model and narrative is that we should deny, reduce and avoid stress. And that is not always the case. Every single person I know can tell of the time where their stress helped them. So instead, in this research, we talk a lot about how can you acknowledge your stress, welcome your stress, and use it in a way that'll be beneficial because it is designed to help you. Now, it's important to say, I'm not saying run towards stress. You shouldn't find more stressors. No, that's not what we're saying. We're saying it's not always a bad thing. It's actually designed to help you.
Maya
You talk about dating your stress.
Modupe
Yes.
Maya
A Slight Change listeners, we're simply asking for a first date. You can decide if you want to do a second or a third, but just go on that first date.
Modupe
That's right.
Maya
Get to know your stress a little better. Embrace it.
Modupe
And be kind to it. Open the door for it, let it in. Welcome it, see how it feels. That's what we need to do a lot more of.
Maya
After the break, we hear more from Modupe about the benefits of this mindset shift, and we talk about its limits. She shares her go-to strategies for managing stress when a simple reframe isn't enough. We'll be back in a moment with A Slight Change of Plans.
Are there situations where applying a stress is enhancing mindset doesn't make sense because I can see a situation where if we apply this mindset too liberally, we might end up tolerating certain stressful situations that we really should try and avoid. So for example, a highly toxic relationship at work or in your personal life, that's a situation where you're kind of, you should really think, "Okay, we need to change this situation. I need to get out of this situation," versus using a mindset shift in order to better adapt to it. So do you have thoughts on that?
Modupe
Yeah. I do think that our minds are so complicated and we will trick ourselves into believing a stressful situation is a good one when it's not. So that's when the idea, remember I talked about demands, resources. One resource is external support your friends, helping you and seeing when something is harmful versus helpful for you.
Maya
Yeah, I think it's helpful to clarify that this is a mindset that's almost best to adopt when you are in situations where you can't avoid the stressor, you can't control whether that situation exists or not. And so adopting a more positive mindset might be one of the few resources at hand.
Modupe
That's absolutely right. And the challenge with the dominant narrative about reducing or avoiding stress is that there are times where we cannot do that. You can't. It's not possible. So that's why it's important to understand how the stress that you're experiencing or how your body's response can be helpful.
Maya
Absolutely. I mean, so many people listening right now are thinking, I don't have any control right now over this stressful situation, so Modupe, thank you for giving us some other techniques.
Modupe
Yeah.
Maya
Okay. Let's say we've consulted with our resources, so our friends and our family and the people that we trust in our lives, and we've consulted with ourselves of course, and we've identified a situation in which having a stress as enhancing mindset is going to serve us well. How do we learn to cultivate this mindset?
Modupe
So a piece of this goes back to that, how do I think of my stress differently? When my heart is beating, I'm normally thinking to myself, this is bad. But if you can remind yourself that my heart beating is telling me I'm excited about something, there's something here that I care about, this is something that I want to do well in, this is something that I can do well in, then that reframes that heartbeat. Not as a bad thing, but as your body preparing to act.
Maya
There have been so many times in my life, whether when I was a child playing the violin or whether it's going into interviews for A Slight Change of Plans, I get a little spooked if I'm not nervous because that means maybe I don't care as much as I used to. And so actually, I see stress as being a very affirming signal because it shows me that I really care about the outcome and it justifies the unpleasantness of some of those feelings.
Modupe
And that's a beautiful way of approaching it, that we are typically stressed because there is an underlying reason why we care about the situation. And if we can continue to ask ourselves why, why, why, then that puts a whole different lens around why you're stressed and changes your approach.
Maya
You give me an example Modupe, from your own life, in which you started asking yourself these series of why questions, and it led you to a place where you're better able to embrace your stress, or at least realize, okay, good, at least it's serving some purpose?
Modupe
Yes. I'm a professor. So each semester I teach 140 plus students. And the day before class, I would always feel very stressed. And here's the thing, it's not that I would also be stressed, I'd also be a jerk. I'd be obnoxious to my loved ones, just not a person that anyone wanted to be around. And in fact, I'd be happier when my significant others were traveling or whatever, because it's like I just wanted to be focused. And I had to say to myself, first of all, that's not sustainable over time. I'm a good teacher. Students like me, I've done this for years.
So I had to say, "Okay, well, why do you have this reaction? Why are you stressed?" And often it was like, "I'm stressed because I don't want to do badly in the classroom. Why? Because I feel like what I have to share with students is really important. Why? Because I'm training future business leaders to be the most phenomenal leaders possible. Why? Well, if I do that well, then our organizations will be healthier and people will be happier in their workplaces. Well, why does that matter? Because if people are happier and healthier in their workplaces, then we're going to be able to address some of the critical challenges in this world, the questions that need to be addressed, solve lots of the problems that need to be solved."
And so when you get to that, then it's like, well A, it tells you that's a good reason to be stressed, but B, it also says, "All right, well, go get it. Go do it." And that's a piece of just kind of acknowledging that type of stress and welcoming it because then you're like, "Oh, I'm pumped up. What am I doing? I'm changing the world."
Maya
I'm feeling pumped right now, just hearing you.
Modupe
Just that process, just that process makes a big difference.
Maya
I really love that Modupe, because as you were sharing this, I related to that early stress, and I was thinking to myself, "That damn well deserves stress." That situation definitely deserves stress because Modupe is changing the world.
Modupe
Yes, yes.
Maya
So it certainly seems like that lecture carries significance and importance because look at all these extremely positive downstream consequences.
Modupe
Right. And the more I do that, then it tells me I don't have to be a jerk.
Maya
Share more about that, because obviously stress does not just have internal consequences, it can have a lot of external consequences on our loved ones and the people we care about.
Modupe
Yes.
Maya
So I'd love to dig into that a bit more. I'm sure that's something a lot of people can resonate with.
Modupe
Yes. One of the first things I tell people to do is to acknowledge your typical reactions to stress. What are their emotions? What are their behaviors and what's their physiology? And the behaviors, one is really important because A, it serves as a signal. When you are going for the potato chips, the wine and yelling at your partner, that probably means you're stressed. So now do an inventory about what you need to do about it. And the reason why it's really important for me to always kind of go back and ask myself why something matters, is that ultimately, none of us wants to do those destructive behaviors to ourselves and to others. And so when you keep asking yourself why, and you understand the bigger picture, one of the things it does, like I need that source of support to help me change the world. So I think it increases your ability to relate to others in a way that can maybe help you in what you're trying to achieve versus them being a distraction that's preventing you from doing what you need to achieve effectively.
Maya
Yeah. This is so interesting because you initially defined stress as the demands of the situation exceed your resources to cope. And I think what I'm hearing from you is we often have more resources than we think. We're just really hesitant to ask for them, to admit that we actually need that kind of support and those resources. And so when we think through this lens, which is my stress has a purpose because I really care about these end outcomes, it can lead us to feel less sheepish about asking a friend for help, asking a loved one if they're willing to give us a hand. It's hard for all of us to ask people for help. It's one of the hardest things.
Modupe
And what's interesting is when we don't ask somebody for help, it's often because there is something that we're uncertain about or feel threatened about or worried about. One of the ways I interpret what you're saying is that when you kind of reframe your stress, the people that seem like demands actually become resources.
Maya
Yes.
Modupe
You can view them more as resources versus as demands. You go from thinking of it as the person who's taking away from my ability to prepare for class to the person who is helping me and can help me in what do I need to do to make this difference in the lives of others.
Maya
Oh, that's so nice. You've taught us how changing our attitudes towards stress can lead to better outcomes, and also how it is that we can cultivate this kind of mindset. But of course, there are lots of situations where we overshoot and a shift in mindset might not be enough to tamp down that response. So what other techniques would you recommend help us to just lower our stress response overall in these kinds of situations? What are the types of things that you do, Modupe, to manage your stress?
Modupe
So I'm a big meditator.
Maya
Darn, I was hoping you wouldn't say meditation.
Modupe
I know, I know. And I couldn't at one point too. And I remember when I was first trying to meditate, I'd just fall asleep each time. Give me five minutes, I am out immediately. But I realize that I really need to slow my mind down. There's so much firing that for me, when I sit and I'm just present first thing in the morning, that allows me to just have a different response to the many things that will come my way during the day. And I say that, and I don't like sounding woo woo, I don't like sounding like that person.
Maya
Hey, meditation is science based. So there's nothing woo woo about it.
Modupe
I have learned in my life that it's something that I need because it slows me down and it's been so helpful. Taking out some time to just be present with yourself helps you to think clearly and act deliberately instead of being reactive.
So one of the types of meditations I engage in focuses on body scanning. So you start with your head and you scan and you just notice each of your bodily sensations, because the idea behind this is that any reaction we typically have is preceded by a physical sensation. And so if we can detect and be good at understanding or feeling our sensations, then that's preempting our reacting immediately. And so I body scan regularly, and I find it to be incredibly helpful.
The other thing, honestly, it's just taking a moment to breathe. That minute that I find myself, like I'm overwhelmed and I have this and that to do and this isn't working, whatever, stop, breathe. Breathe, just breathe. And it just slows things down in a unique way that then lets you say, "Okay, how am I feeling right now? Let me take an inventory." That's what I often do. I need to pause and take an inventory instead of just trying to push through. Stop and pause.
Maya
As you look into the future of stress research, what excites you most? So what are you most hoping that researchers crack?
Modupe
I really want people to be better at understanding when they're stressed, because you are the only person that's with you 24/7. And so what I'm most excited about are some of the technologies that will allow people to notice when they're stressed. Is there a buzzing thing on your finger that tells you that your blood pressure is super high right now, pay attention? Is there some type of device that is telling you, okay, here's what your cardiovascular reactivity is looking like right now? There's a spike right here, breathe a little bit. And so as technology develops and can even kind of help us in noticing some of these things and I think of it as that blinking light that says, "Hey, pay attention," then I think that'll help us in being able to give ourselves what we need, and that ultimately means it will be healthier and happier.
Maya
So that's interesting because I feel like I'm sort of excited about technology, and I want to get your thoughts on this because on the one hand, I think that kind of self-awareness and understanding is so critical. On the other hand, we're trying to measure so much, and all these measurements are also just proxies of stress, right? Too much vigilance around our physiological states and or our mental states can breed almost a new kind of anxiety, like a meta layer of anxiety. Do you feel in any way that there's limits to how much we should be in tune with our body and minds? Because at a certain point, it can be so excessive where you just forget, you know what, I just need to kind of exist too, and I don't need my little phone or my watch or my ring buzzing at me telling me that I'm stressed in any given moment because I'm just hanging out with my friends and I don't know, maybe I don't want the biofeedback.
Modupe
Yes. The thing about stress research, and I guess much research, is that you have to know yourself and know what works for you and what doesn't. If you're the type of person where the constant monitoring will be more stressful, then you shouldn't constantly monitor. But if you're the type of person where the monitoring makes you say, "Ooh, I only got two hours of sleep last night, but I need to get more and I know," and that helps you and helps change your behavior, then do it. So for me, I am one of those people. I'm hard enough on myself, so I don't need a buzzing thing. I need to be more gentle. But how I use this technology is to say, I'm kind of feeling tired. How much rest did I get? Oh, wow. I've been in the danger zone for five days. Let me do something that will remind me to get in bed earlier.
So if you can use it lovingly and gently in a way that will help you behave in a healthy way for you, that's what I'm talking about. I also wouldn't want us to overuse our technology and rely on it to tell us the things that we need to rely on our minds and bodies to tell us. I just think of it as another metric to use to paint a holistic picture of what's going on with you. And because it's so hard to be in tune with what our bodies are doing, because we've ignored our bodies for so long, these technologies give us greater insight that we wouldn't ordinarily have.
Maya
Yeah, I love that. I think that's exactly right. So you've been doing this work for a while, and I wonder, in your years of doing stress research, whether there's any example that's particularly salient for you where someone reached out to you and said, "Modupe, you changed the game for me. You really, really helped me manage this stressful situation or changed my mindset." Are there any personal testimonials that you can share with us so we can see the impact of your research in the wild?
Modupe
The biggest example I have is a couple of years ago, I was talking to a friend and she was super, super stressed. And I literally just asked her, "What do you need?" And she said, "I need somebody to accompany me to a walkthrough of her home because she was closing on it the next day." And you know that's stressful. You're worried like, "Am I getting ripped off? Is the microwave going to work?" And just having somebody else with you to help out with that is huge.
And sometimes you think you have to do it by yourself and that no one's going to have time for you, or everyone has busy schedules, which they do. But can you at least ask first and let someone say no. But more often than not, people will make it work because if you've cultivated those relationships, they'll move things around their schedule to be there for you. And that sticks with me because it's something that I also need to remind myself to do. Ask myself, "What do I need right now? What do I need?" It's simple. So many of the answers to our stress are within us, and we just need to ask. We just need to ask.
Maya
Hey, thanks so much for listening. On next week's episode, we hear from comedian Hasan Minhaj. In our conversation, Hasan gets candid about the downsides of his sudden rise in popularity and how it's fed in unhealthy obsession with being liked. He tells me he's now reconsidering his future in comedy.
Hasan Minhaj
Being an artist is who I am.
Maya
Yes.
Hasan Minhaj
I do have this need to express myself, but I have to find new mediums as my life continues that are less and less and less attached to whether people like me or not.
Maya
A Slight Change of Plans is created, written and executive produced by me, Maya Shankar. The Slight Change family includes our showrunner, Tyler Greene, our senior editor, Kate Parkinson-Morgan, our sound engineer, Andrew Vastola, and our associate producer, Sara McCrea. Luis Guerra wrote our delightful theme song, and Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals. A Slight Change of Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries. So big thanks to everyone there. And of course, a very special thanks to Jimmy Lee. You can follow A Slight Change of Plans on Instagram, @DrMayaShankar.
Modupe
Everything in moderation. That's what this is about.
Maya
Except for Girl Scout cookies.
Modupe
I know.
Maya
Thin Mints.
Modupe
Thin Mints?
Maya
Yeah, exactly.
Modupe
Thin Mints.
Maya
There's no moderation there.
Modupe
Yes.
The Host
