How Did Kelly McGonigal Sneak Compassion Into Her TED Talk?

Kelly McGonigal sneaked compassion into her TED Talk after the organizers told her they were already covered on compassion. For a couple of years they asked what she would speak on, and she wanted to present her compassion research. They said they had already had a good talk on compassion and would check back in a year. Around the third year the theme was think again, and they asked what she wanted people to reconsider. She offered the stress lecture from Introduction to Psychology at Stanford. She puts the talk at something like 30 million views. It started as an attempt to reframe stress.

Robert Sapolsky used to give that Psych 1 lecture right before finals, to mostly freshmen. His research has focused mostly on how stress is horrible and how little can be done about it. He told the students that stress will kill you, damages brain cells, makes you impotent, and that nothing had yet been found that helps. That was the last thing they heard in exam week. She took the lecture because she wanted a message that would help before exams. If you are anxious before a test and you tell yourself the stress is normal, the anxiety can be helping you. Anxious people tend to do better than people who are totally calm.

Compassion was still the subject she cared about most. In the talk she tries to sneak in an instinct to be compassionate, and the claim that compassion is one way to modulate stress.