Most Americans now treat stress as a fact of life. A new national survey finds that 72% of adults agree stress is just something they have to live with.

A Harvard psychologist who has studied the mind and body for nearly five decades says that view gets stress backward. In a clip Lewis Howes shares from The School of Greatness, she explains the healthiest way she knows to handle stress, and it starts with a pen.

What Is the 1 Stress Mistake Most People Make?

The advice comes from a researcher who studies mindfulness and the mind-body connection. Her name is Ellen Langer, and in 1981 she became the first woman tenured in Harvard’s psychology department .

“Events don’t cause stress,” Langer says on the podcast. “What causes stress are the views you take of the event.”

That’s the mistake. We blame the event, when the real trigger is the story we tell ourselves about it.

In a 2014 interview with On Being , she explained that stress usually rests on two assumptions. First, that the bad thing will happen.…