According to Dr. Mendes and others a positive approach tends generate good stress. This was brought into limelight by a study which involved 50 college students. During that study few amongst the college students were trained to believe that feeling excited or nervous before a presentation could get better performance. On the other hand, a control group did not obtain that instruction. When the students were asked to compose a speech about themselves, while getting vital opinions, those who received the training showed a better physiological response, leading to increased dilation of the arteries and smaller rises in blood pressure than the control group.

A similar research has also proved that students, who received the same training, to believe that feeling excited or nervous before an exam could get better performance, received high scores on a mock test in the lab and also on the real exam conducted three months later, compared with controls, reveals a study co-authored by Dr. Mendes and published last year in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. The students who received higher marks in the exam also had higher levels of salivary amylase, a protein marker for adrenaline that is related to positive stress.

Furthermore, people react differently to stress every day. At-home or mobile biofeedback devices can sense spikes in the heart rate. Hand-held thermometers also can be used to note down when the temperature of one's hands falls below 95 degrees, says Kenneth Pelletier, a clinical professor of medicine at both the University of Arizona School of Medicine and the University of California School of Medicine, San Francisco.