

This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "Willpower Doesn't Work" by Benjamin Hardy. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
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What is eustress, and how can it help you achieve your goals? How can you create this positive stress in your life?
In Willpower Doesn’t Work, Benjamin Hardy discusses the power of eustress, a healthy form of stress that keeps you focused and energized. He outlines three effective ways to harness this motivational force for your work, fitness, and creative projects.
Read more to learn how eustress can transform your approach to challenges and productivity.
Leveraging Eustress
Hardy says that, as you design your working environment, your first priority should be to create eustress. So, what is eustress? Eustress is healthy, manageable stress that keeps you focused and energized (as opposed to distress, which is distracting and tiring). You could also think of eustress as pressure or motivation; whichever term you prefer, it’s an external force that pushes you to do your best work.
Note that “work” in this context doesn’t just mean your job. Instead, Hardy suggests keeping eustress front-of-mind for anything that takes effort, such as fitness goals and creative projects.
Eustress Is Distress Minus Danger The difference between eustress and distress is a sense of danger—when you feel challenged, but not threatened, you experience eustress. However, it’s important to note that your brain can’t tell the difference between emotional danger (such as rejection or shame) and physical danger; it experiences both as simply “danger.” Therefore, when designing your work environment, protect yourself from both kinds of danger to make sure you’re creating eustress. In The Upside of Stress, psychologist Kelly McGonigal says that positive stress triggers the challenge response. The challenge response prepares you for action by increasing your heart rate, causing you to breathe more heavily, sharpening your focus, and giving you a burst of energy. In fact, the challenge response is very similar to the more commonly known fight-or-flight response, with one crucial difference: Because you don’t perceive any danger, your body doesn’t tense up and your brain doesn’t flood you with stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. This is important because those responses to danger put you under a lot of physical and mental strain, leading to numerous health problems in the long run. For example, chronic stress (the bad kind) is linked to issues ranging from muscle pain and stomach upset to insomnia, anxiety, and addiction. In short, eustress provides all the productivity benefits of distress, but without the harmful side effects. |
3 Ways to Create Eustress
Hardy’s tips for creating eustress fall into three categories.
1. Challenging yourself. One of the most effective ways to create eustress is to set difficult goals because you’ll be motivated to work harder to reach those goals. This often means that the goal itself is ambitious, like doubling your income by the end of next year. However, it could also mean setting a goal that’s difficult for you personally, such as overcoming an injury or giving your house a top-to-bottom cleaning (if cleaning is something you struggle with).
(Shortform note: In The 10X Rule, entrepreneur and sales coach Grant Cardone offers a way to make sure you’re setting appropriately challenging goals for yourself: Set a reasonable goal, then multiply it by 10. For instance, if a reasonable goal for you is to earn $100,000 next year, your 10X goal would be to earn a million dollars. Like Hardy, Cardone says that challenging goals will motivate you to work harder; however, Cardone adds that falling short of a 10X goal still means you’ve probably accomplished more than you would have by meeting a reasonable goal.)

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- Why you can’t just “will” your way to success
- Practical ways to optimize your working and resting environments
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