New book encourages readers to embrace uncertainty in order to improve decision-making, mental health, and more

Life is uncer­tain. We nev­er know what will hap­pen, and many things are unknow­able. This can make us feel stressed or wor­ried, since the unknown is asso­ci­at­ed with dan­ger. But as jour­nal­ist Mag­gie Jack­son argues in her new book, Uncer­tain: The Wis­dom and Won­der of Being Unsure, there are many ben­e­fits to allow­ing our­selves to…

Read More

Six favorite books of 2023 to help harness the stress response and boost curiosity, wonder, and brain health at work,

It’s hard to address impor­tant issues in our lives or in soci­ety if we are stressed, deplet­ed, and iso­lat­ed. Per­haps that’s why many of 2023’s favorite books offer approach­es for real self-care. They focus on how to man­age stress, find more hap­pi­ness in life, seek won­der and inspi­ra­tion, appre­ci­ate art, under­stand our per­son­al strengths, or…

Read More

The 7 Habits of Highly Stress-Resilient Minds

Are you suf­fer­ing from chron­ic stress? Many of us are—whether we’re stressed out by our jobs, com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ships, care­giv­ing respon­si­bil­i­ties, or the gen­er­al state of the world. That’s where Elis­sa Epel’s new book, The Stress Pre­scrip­tion, comes in. A health psy­chol­o­gist and direc­tor of the Aging, Metab­o­lism, and Emo­tions Cen­ter at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San…

Read More

Q&A with Dr. Wendy Suzuki on the parasympathetic nervous system and harnessing anxiety for good

Anx­i­ety can feel like a heavy weight that we didn’t ask to car­ry. Who wouldn’t love to get rid of it? But neu­ro­sci­en­tist Wendy Suzu­ki wants to chal­lenge the way we look at our anx­i­ety. In fact, her new book is called Good Anx­i­ety: Har­ness­ing the Pow­er of the Most Mis­un­der­stood Emo­tion. If you’re skep­ti­cal, so…

Read More

Study: A few slow-paced breaths are enough to significantly reduce physiological stress

It’s one of the first things par­ents and teach­ers tell a child who gets upset: “Take a deep breath.” But research into the effect of deep breath­ing on the body’s stress response has over­whelm­ing­ly ignored young chil­dren – and stud­ies done with adults typ­i­cal­ly take place in a uni­ver­si­ty lab, mak­ing them even less applicable…

Read More