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And when oxytocin is released in the stress response, it is motivating you to seek support.

Your biological stress response is nudging you to tell someone how you feel, instead of bottling it up.

Your stress response wants to make sure you notice when someone else in your life is struggling so that you can support each other.

When life is difficult, your stress response wants you to be surrounded by people who care about you.

Okay, so how is knowing this side of stress going to make you healthier?

Well, oxytocin doesn't only act on your brain.

It also acts on your body, and one of its main roles in your body is to protect your cardiovascular system from the effects of stress.

It's a natural anti-inflammatory.

It also helps your blood vessels stay relaxed during stress.

But my favorite effect on the body is actually on the heart.

Your heart has receptors for this hormone, and oxytocin helps heart cells regenerate and heal from any stress-induced damage.

This stress hormone strengthens your heart.

And the cool thing is that all of these physical benefits of oxytocin are enhanced by social contact and social support.

So when you reach out to others under stress, either to seek support or to help someone else, you release more of this hormone, your stress response becomes healthier, and you actually recover faster from stress.

I find this amazing, that your stress response has a built-in mechanism for stress resilience, and that mechanism is human connection.

I want to finish by telling you about one more study. And listen up, because this study could also save a life.

This study tracked about 1,000 adults in the United States, and they ranged in age from 34 to 93, and they started the study by asking, "How much stress have you experienced in the last year?"

They also asked, "How much time have you spent helping out friends, neighbors, people in your community?"

And then they used public records for the next five years to find out who died.

Okay, so the bad news first: For every major stressful life experience, like financial difficulties or family crisis, that increased the risk of dying by 30 percent.

But -- and I hope you are expecting a "but" by now -- but that wasn't true for everyone.

People who spent time caring for others showedabsolutely no stress-related increase in dying. Zero. Caring created resilience.

And so we see once again that the harmful effects of stress on your health are not inevitable.

How you think and how you act can transform your experience of stress.

When you choose to view your stress response as helpful, you create the biology of courage.

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