Kelly McGonigal

speaker

787 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 24 Jul

Kelly McGonigal’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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The School of Greatness · The Real Reason Stress Is Hurting You | Kelly McGonigal · 24 Jul 2026 podcast

You are still plastic in that sense.

And so when we look at people who have flourished despite trauma, often it's because they put themselves in other life experiences that are both positive and increase plasticity.

And there are also, there are like biological events in your life that increase plasticity.

So when you become a parent,

It doesn't matter if you gave birth to the child.

Even if you're adopting, even if you are a father who did not go through pregnancy, that it actually, your brain changes in ways that make you very receptive to learning.

and to being changed by that experience.

Your brain recognizes big transitions and your brain gets you ready to change in ways that support that transition.

So I was going to say falling in love is another one too.

If you are in a really bad relationship or good relationship, man, is that a window of plasticity that can deeply change

how you experience life, how you think about yourself, your physical health.

So I think that if you understand that even if you have been traumatized in ways that are not great for your health or your happiness, to appreciate that often it's the people who are most strongly affected by negative events, you are also most sensitive to positive events.

It's actually like there's genetics behind this.

The people who are most negatively affected are also the most positively affected, not by trauma,

but by positive experiences, that means that you can start to find a way to move forward.

You look for those life experiences that hold meaning for you.

You look for a way to make this a turning point and a transition to re-engage all that capacity for change.

That's the thing I would highlight more.

And the other thing I will say is when I was writing my book on stress, I talked to a researcher who has studied the impact of traumatic and adverse

life events on all sorts of outcomes.

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