If you could do something to decrease your risk of memory failure, to increase your self-confidence, to be a better public speaker, to improve your brain, to bust out of your comfort zone, to make your children more resilient, would you do it?

What if it involved embracing what we all to our utmost try to steer clear of — namely, stress?

Yeah, always a catch. Think about it though — which Irish psychologist Ian Robertson, author of “The Stress Test: How Pressure Can Make You Stronger and Sharper,” has done as well as studied quite extensively. And you might remember quoting, once or twice, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”

The statement, Robertson said, “has always intrigued me.” He’s also fond of quoting golfer Tiger Woods: “I’ve always said the day I’m not nervous playing is the day I quit.”

Granted, stress before a golf tournament isn’t exactly a life-or-death situation, but the premise is along the same lines.

“All performers and musicians and sports performers know you need that edge,” said Robertson who, as the T. Boone Pickens Distinguished Scientist at the Center for BrainHealth, spends part of his year at the University of Texas at Dallas institute and part in Ireland.

“Whether it’s an opportunity or stress is hugely under our control.”

Think about it: A pounding heart, dry mouth, sweaty skin, churning stomach could be signs of anxiety — or of excitement, fear, anger, sexual attraction, he said. “We only know what emotion we’re having by interpreting these nonspecific arousal symptoms in context.”

The takeaway? If you’re about to give a presentation or face a challenge, instead of saying, “I am anxious,” say out loud, “I am excited.” That switches the brain from avoidance mindset into challenged mindset, he said.

As he says in an interview with Brain Matters, the Center for BrainHealth publication, “Moderate stress, properly handled, increases alertness, which in turn helps brain circuits function more efficiently.”

He’s not, he emphasizes, talking about “severe and prolonged stress.” He’s instead talking about the kind that’s inherent with being human. Job problems. Relationship problems. Money worries. Trying something new. And, in the case of his best friend, being run over by a bus while cycling. The accident cost Robertson’s friend an arm, smashed his knees, and almost took his life.

“The morning he woke up after surgery,” Robertson recalled, “I flew in from Dublin and found myself putting my head on his forehead and saying, ‘What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.’”

The act, Robertson said, was “totally unpremeditated.” But later, his friend told Robertson “It was like a surge of electricity through his brain, that it electrified him. He was barely conscious. I remember him struggling up, his head barely off the pillow, and saying, ‘I’m going to beat this.’ “