Giving Compass' Take:

• This video from Futurity explains how to cope with stress in ways that can help you use it to your benefit and avoid its downsides. 

• How does stress most affect your life? What tools do you use to cope with stress? 

• Here's an article on the research showing exposure to the outdoors and natures can significantly reduce stress. 

The way we think about stress makes a huge difference in how stress affects us, says Bridgette Hard, associate professor of the practice of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University. Reframing our ideas about stress can reduce its harmful impacts.

“We’ve been told for decades that stress is really bad for us. It’s bad for our health, for our well-being, and even for our work performance. And there’s a good reason to believe this is true. There’s a lot of scientific evidence suggesting that stress can be bad,” Hard says.

“But some more recent research is suggesting that we haven’t had a full picture of actually how stress works and how we can manage it more effectively.”

Read the full article on coping with stress from Duke University featured on Futurity.