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

I don't know if you noticed I swallowed while you were saying that.

Often it's this parasympathetic surge of

that happens when people are either moved or are starting to feel sometimes like a little bit vulnerable, but not necessarily in a bad way.

And like if you watch people give speeches or interviews or you're having a conversation with someone and you notice they pause and swallow, that's a really interesting sign that there's something like deep happening, that this is something that's meaningful to them or they're being moved.

And so I often like as a psychologist, that's one thing that I'm looking for and I sense that in myself.

So that was, I was feeling that rawness of, of being receiving, you know.

Yeah.

Oh, you know, I knew you were going to ask this.

Um, and so I looked it up.

So here's what's interesting.

Cause I was like, I don't know.

Let's see what the actual definition of, cause I'm sure that I'll have a different definition.

And I was surprised that it's essentially.

it is in comparison to other people.

So the primary definitions of greatness in the dictionary are being better than or superior to others.

And I thought that was really interesting because that is really not something I'm interested in.

So I was thinking, well, let's give an alternative to that.

Because if you think you have to be superior to others in order to be great, and greatness is an aspiration, man, is that going to set you up for a lot of suffering?

So I was thinking coming back to that, um, that sort of central conflict in my work of recognizing the complexity of human nature, human nature has a lot of instincts that are destructive and harmful and human nature has a lot of instincts that are beautiful and wonderful.

I would define greatness.

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