How to Make Stress Work for You

by Kimberlee Bethany Bonura

Life is stressful. There’s just no getting around it. But while everyday stressors are a fact of life, that doesn’t mean they have to control you. Rather, with the right scientific understanding, you can actually make stress work for you instead of against you.

According to fitness and wellness consultant Dr. Kimberlee Bethany Bonura, trying to live a completely stress-free life is a zero-sum game. Life without stress is an apathetic life in which nothing matters. The true goal of your relationship with stress is to figure out how to manage it effectively; how to use it to build and support a meaningful, resilient life.

Recent years have seen a wealth of new insights into the science of stress and its effects on our physiological and psychological health. These insights, the product of fascinating research and studies, are more than simply interesting to learn about. They’re vital, powerful tools you can use to transform how you think about (and react to) stress, whether everyday stressors like traffic jams or unexpected traumas like a death in the family.

With the 18 enriching and inspiring lectures of How to Make Stress Work for You, Dr. Bonura shows you how to manage and minimize the stress in your life. You’ll learn how to identify the types of stress you’re most vulnerable to, what your current stress responses are, ways to manage your response to stress (including key behavior modifications and mental exercises), and a plethora of other relevant, practical, and even essential information on integrating stress into a healthy lifestyle. Rooted in scientific findings from experiments, research papers, case studies, and first-hand experiences from Dr. Bonura’s life and career, this course offers you nothing less than a bold new way of facing (and appreciating) daily life.

Genres: Self Help, Audiobook, Psychology, Health, Nonfiction

Audio CD

First published January 1, 2017

Reviews

[Robin Mydlak · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really liked this one. The perfect balance between evidence-based presentation of integrative and holistic (not alternative!) approaches to stress and guidance for practice and incorporation into everyday life. Highly recommend.

[Jackballoon · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book started slowly, but picked up incredibly during the second half . Good information!

[Juan Rivera · Rating 1 out of 5]

Stress is inevitable, and it is much more inevitable in this modern life where we have everything "under control", but we are worrying about all sorts of things all the time.

An interesting fact is that the more you care about something or someone, the more you can feel stress about it.

Of all the courses I've heard from "The Great Courses" the first one I did not really like: "How to Make Stress Work for You" narrated by Professor Kimberlee Bethany Bonura, PhD

And I did not like it because practically all the subjects of the course had already listened to them and the teacher, the truth, brings very little. There are much better books and courses on stress.

Perhaps the most important theme that reminded me of the book: when you work something without rest (like exercise) do not improve and do not grow on it. In the case of stress (which is something positive according to the book) and exercise (in my case), having a strong period of practice and then rest is the best to grow and strengthen. This topic strikes me because I daily exercise and the day I rest at least two hours ... now I do not feel guilty for the days that I do nothing.

[Jeff Keehr · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author makes an excellent point at the outset: stress is necessary; without it, we would have no reason to get out of bed. She then delineates the different kinds of stress, which ranges from everyday stress to tragedy. And from there she proceeds to examine how best to handle each kind of stress. It's a fairly pedestrian book in terms of the information it imparts. We need to learn how to channel stress to make it work for us or we need to learn how to handle the stress that we cannot channel. She recommends meditation and yoga and mentions lots of other methods. Some of what she does in the book would lend itself better to video than the audio book I listened to.

[Andrew McJorrow · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably a 3.5 rating. I think Kimberlee is to be congratulated on making the science of stress and resilience accessible and easy to understand for a lay audience. 'How to Make Stress Work for You' is a very useful resource for anyone wanting to develop their knowledge and understanding of this important topic. There is good coverage of the empirical research and many exercises, outline of lectures below:

Lecture 1 A New Mindset about Stress .........................................................4
Lecture 2 Happiness: A Fickle Queen .........................................................12
Lecture 3 Anger: A Tyrannical King .............................................................20
Lecture 4 Swimming in an Ocean of Sorrow ...............................................28
Lecture 5 Why You Stress: Arousal and Value Judgment ...........................35
Lecture 6 Choose Your Adventure: Choose Your Stress .............................44
Lecture 7 Heaven and Hell Can Be Other People.......................................52
Lecture 8 Our Overstressed, Overscheduled Kids ......................................61
Lecture 9 Change Your Mind to Change Your Stress..................................70
Lecture 10 Emergency Stress Management .................................................79
Lecture 11 Good Stress Helps You Handle All Stress ...................................87
Lecture 12 The Stress of Learning and Mastery ...........................................95
Lecture 13 Alternative Approaches to Stress ..............................................103
Lecture 14 Mindfulness: Heart Healing to Manage Stress .......................... 112
Lecture 15 Channeling Stress for a Competitive Edge................................121
Lecture 16 Emerging Stress Management Technology ...............................130
Lecture 17 Rest, Restore, Recover Your Resilience ...................................139
Lecture 18 Learning from Your Stress .........................................................147

I can see myself returning to some of the material from time to time. The exercises (meditations, relaxation techniques) are helpful but they left me cringing slightly (the background music had an almost comical flavour for me - I prefer Headspace's style).

If approached with a desire to learn and an open mind, this course will reward you.

[Elwin Kline · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very well done self-help stress management Great Course.

This is one of those where I ended up taking four (4) pages of notes. I'll spare the review reader a copy and paste of that, but just know that it is really great content that can absolutely shift, enrich, and improve not only your mindset but your life as a whole (physically and mentally).

-1 star for injecting political opinion towards the back half of the presentation. In the heat of the moment I wanted to drop this all the way down to a 1-star. But, she did do a good job so giving myself some time to execute some of her stress management techniques presented... I guess I won't be as overwhelming harsh on political injection like I have been in the past. It does certainly bother me though, regardless of what side/point of view one is on.... if you are in a position of academic authority (aka someone presenting a Great Course) - stick to the subject at hand and do not push agendas. It's quite abhorred. Thanks.

Otherwise, amazing Great Course!

[Justus · Rating 3 out of 5]

She had some good information, but often she took the data and tried to extrapolate it into some absolute truth. There were some sections that all I could hear were past professors saying, "correlation does not equal causation." She tried to offer blanket solutions to problems that could very much require personalized solutions. She seemed very dismissive of stress at parts while trying to sound empathetic.

[Max Patiiuk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not much new information. Felt like half of the book was just quoting the most commonly cited studies.
Also, this format starts to feel dated - today ChatGPT would do a much better job of giving you advise exactly in the moment you need it, personalized to your situation - much more impactful since you are more motivated to apply the things learned in the moment, rather from a book you read a few years ago.

[Skuli Saeland · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ágætis umfjöllun um stress, áhrif þess á líkamlega og andlega heilsu, hvernig hægt er að takast á við óhóflegt stress en líka láta hæfilegt stress vinna með sér. Fyrirlestrarnir eru studdir margvíslegum upplýsingum um rannsóknir sem styðja vel við umfjöllunina auk þess sem farið er yfir kennslu í hugleiðslu og jóga.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

On the positive side, the video course has very good info, but the course could have been shorter without so much generic stuff.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing course!