Stress Is Not What You Think It Is
Stress Is Not What You Think It Is
Plus: How To Build An Unbeatable Mind & Why The Most Successful Leaders Are Losers
March 22, 2026
“Just because you’re not burning out doesn’t mean you’re firing on all cylinders.”
I was addicted to stress. Just not in a way I recognised at the time.
I prided myself on resilience - the late nights, the deadline pressure, the ability to keep going when others couldn't.
I lived for the buzz of big pitches and that feeling of being in the ‘arena’. It made me feel alive.
But that quest for cortisol ‘hits’ comes at a cost - seek too much of it and you’ll be cashing cheques your brain and body can’t handle.
Everyone has a breaking point, and in my last corporate role I came far too close to it for comfort.
That led me on a journey of self-discovery (yes, I know how that sounds, but it’s the most honest way I can put it). Neuroscience gave me many of the answers I was looking for, and spending time with elite performance specialists deepened that knowledge.
And this newsletter will always be about sharing those insights with you
So here's what you actually need to know about stress.
The Science
Most people think of stress as psychological. Something you feel. Something you manage with the right mindset.
That framing is incomplete - and it's a big part of why so much well-meaning stress advice falls short.
Our Head of Brain Health and Performance, Samira Cutts, is an expert on stress management and she is clear that stress is physiological as well as psychological.
When the brain perceives any form of stress (positive or negative) it triggers the same basic physiological response: adrenaline and cortisol are released, your heart rate rises, glucose floods the bloodstream, and your body shifts into a state of heightened readiness.
What determines whether that response helps you or harms you isn't the mechanism. It's how your brain appraises it - and how long it lasts.
There are three distinct states you need to understand.
Eustress is activated when you’re faced with something you view as a challenge rather than a threat. The same adrenaline and cortisol are in play and the body is primed and ready. This is the buzz before a big pitch, the nerves before a keynote.speech. This type of stress is actually productive and allows you to perform at your best when it matters most.
Acute stress is the same physiological activation, but this time you’re perceiving the situation as a threat rather than a challenge. This means your amygdala (the ‘emotional’ part of the brain) overpowers your prefrontal cortex (think of that as your executive function HQ). You freeze, you find it hard to think straight and you don’t feel in control. You’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.
Chronic stress is what happens when either state is sustained without sufficient recovery. Yale neuroscientist Dr Amy Arnsten's research shows that even mild uncontrollable stress causes a rapid decline in your cognitive performance - your ability to think clearly, act decisively and regulate your emotions. And the cost isn't just neurological. Upstream stress manifests physically downstream - weakened immune system, loss of energy, constant brain fog. Welcome to the fast track to burnout.
The Elite Method
Two things separate high performers who manage stress well from those who don't. One is physiological. One is psychological.
The rubber band principle
Think about a rubber band. Stretch it, release it - it snaps back to full elasticity. Stretch it repeatedly without letting it return to its natural state, and eventually it loses its give entirely.
Your nervous system works in a similar way.
Josh Waitzkin - chess prodigy, martial arts champion, and one of the most studied performance thinkers alive - built his entire methodology around knowing your own body well enough to recognise when you need to be a 10 out of 10, and when to deliberately come back to a 2. Full intensity, then full release. Not as a reward for hard work, because you can’t be a 10 if you’re not finding the time to be a 2.
Rest isn't the absence of performance. It's what makes prime performance possible - they are two sides of the same coin.
Don’t treat recovery as a luxury you’ll get to eventually. You won't, because something will always fill the space. And a body that never returns to its natural state eventually stops rebounding. The Simmering Six is dangerous for exactly this reason - a constant 6 out of 10 feels like control, but that masks a kill zone of high performance. Just because you’re not burning out doesn’t mean you’re firing on all cylinders.
The Reframing Concept
Your brain is wired to scan for threats. It's an evolutionary survival mechanism that served our ancestors well. However, in a modern leadership environment, it fires far more often than it needs to.
The same physical signals I mentioned earlier - raised heart rate, shortened breath, heightened alertness - can be read as threat or as readiness for a challenge. The situation hasn’t changed. Your interpretation of it has. And that interpretation has a measurable physiological effect.
Proof of how elite performers handle a situation like this came during the 2024 Euros penalty shootout, in the form of Ronaldo's heart rate tracker data. It showed that his heart rate actually dropped to its lowest point right when he took his penalty. That’s right, at what most of us would regard as the most stressful moment of his tournament, he was physiologically calmer than at any other moment in the match.
That's evidence of a trained stress response - years of interpreting pressure as a challenge rather than threat.
In part II next week, we’ll get into the specific skills and techniques you can apply to manage stress better - for yourself and your team.
🔥 LIVE BETTER, LEAD BETTER
The best content I researched this week:
1. One major stress trigger is information paralysis - that overload of data that actually makes it harder to be decisive. That’s why I’d recommend reading this short article on why more information makes you slower.
2. Which is why you need to be more decisive, regardless of the outcome - the most successful leaders are losers, explained in 45 seconds.
3. I’ll be going into this in more detail next week, but meditation is proven to help reduce stress. However, the noise from the ‘woo woo’ crowd is frequently misleading. Listen to this former Navy Seal commander share how you can build an unbeatable mind.
4. Your emotions are also a major stress driver, so these 3 simple tips from a neuroscientist about experimenting with your emotions will help you.
5. Finally, in keeping with the importance of avoiding information paralysis, Tim Ferris invited 5 experts to share the 1-3 decisions that could simplify your life in 2026. Remember, great leadership is frequently a subtraction game.
Share this with a fellow leader - we’re stronger together.
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