Why Being “A Little Bit Stressed All the Time” Is Worse Than Real Pressure
Jan 23, 2026
Why deep rest, not more resilience training, is now a critical skill for leaders who want sustainable performance and lower burnout risk.
Most leaders I work with don’t describe themselves as stressed. They are highly functional. Very capable. Holding significant responsibility. They are getting through long days. Multitasking. Reaching objectives. Motivating others. On the surface, things are working.
And yet, beneath that competence, something else is happening.
Their body thinks it is under threat. Not because of one major crisis. But because of constant, low-grade pressure. This matters far more than most leadership conversations acknowledge.
We have been taught that stress is the price of leadership. That pressure sharpens performance. That rest is something you earn once the work is done. Biology tells a different story. Short bursts of real pressure are not the problem. Humans are built for that.
What breaks us down is never fully coming off “on”.
Always alert. Always available. Always slightly tense.
Being a little bit stressed all the time is worse than intense effort followed by genuine recovery.
Read that again.
Stress is biologically expensive
From a physiological perspective, stress dramatically increases energy demand. Even brief psychological stress can raise energy expenditure by 50 to 60 percent above resting levels. When stress hormones remain mildly elevated, the body starts making trade-offs.
Resources are diverted away from repair and regeneration, digestion and immune function, emotional regulation and cognitive clarity and reallocated towards vigilance and survival. I mean, it makes sense that it isn't important for your gut to digest your lunch wrap or to come up with a creative innovative idea when your body thinks it is under immediate threat.
This is why so many of the people I work with express feeling "tired but wired". They're exhausted unable to get the sleep they need. It's why focus drops and we reach for more caffeine. Why patience thins. Why we snap at the people we care about most. Why we forget where we left our keys. And forget many other things too. Why we look to numb and distract ourselves with sugar, alcohol, excessive exercise, series binge watching and other activities.
This fatigue, this burnout rarely arrives in one dramatic moment. It creeps in quietly. This is not a character flaw or a mindset failure. It is an energy accounting problem. And often those with burnout are in that position because they care. They care perhaps too much. I can resonate with this and have experienced my own burnout because of pushing to please and support others without resourcing myself proportionally.
Burnout is a nervous system issue, not a character flaw
Burnout happens when chronic stress overwhelms the nervous system’s capacity to recover.
Many leadership cultures unknowingly lock people into low-grade threat states. Back-to-back meetings. Always-on communication. No real physiological pauses.
Leaders shape nervous systems through the environments they create, whether they realise it or not.
If leaders do not understand this, they unintentionally build teams that remain biologically depleted.
No strategy, no matter how robust, can survive this undermining.
Burnout also carries a significant business cost
This is not just a wellbeing issue. It is a performance issue. Globally, burnout and work-related stress cost organisations hundreds of billions each year through lost productivity, absenteeism, presenteeism, turnover, and rising healthcare costs.
In the UK alone, poor mental health at work is estimated to cost businesses over £28 billion per year.
Behind those numbers are real consequences. Slower thinking. More errors. Lower engagement. Higher attrition. Leaders making decisions from depleted nervous systems which drives costs that are significant yet hard to quantify.
When energy is compromised at a biological level, no amount of strategy can compensate.
Rest is not time off. It is a biological state.
One of the most important ideas emerging from current research is deep rest. Not collapse. Not distraction. Not numbing out. Deep rest is a coordinated psycho-physiological state where the nervous system receives a clear signal:
You are safe. Nothing is urgently required. Resources are sufficient.
Only in this state does the body resume cellular repair, hormonal regulation, emotional stability and the kind of creative and strategic thinking leaders need to be cultivating especially now. This is why rest is not something you earn after performance. It is a pre-condition for it.
Why leaders struggle to access deep rest
You cannot think your way into deep rest. And you cannot schedule it with good intentions alone. Deep rest occurs when the autonomic nervous system shifts. When heart, breath, and brain start sending the same message. It takes practice. This is where heart-brain coherence becomes so powerful.
As a HeartMath coach and a long-standing meditation practitioner, I practise and teach how to access these deep rest states by altering brainwave activity and using simple breathing techniques that can be used almost anywhere, anytime.
Heart coherence is a measurable physiological state where heart rhythms become ordered and efficient. In this state, emotional reactivity drops, cognitive clarity improves, and energy efficiency increases. You feel calm, yet alert. Relaxed, yet awake.
Calm becomes contagious. Presence becomes power.
Yes, this can happen in a boardroom
This work is not theoretical. I have guided these practices in boardrooms, conferences, leadership offsites, and executive sessions. Most recently, during a keynote with 170 people.
Leaders and their teams experience deep rest while seated together, in professional clothes, in high-pressure environments.
Shoulders drop. Breath slows. The quality of thinking shifts as brain wave states change from beta to alpha. It is embodied. Measurable. Immediately felt. There is always a collective sigh and at least one individual AHA moment!
Deep rest is the evolution of resilience training
Traditional resilience training focuses on enduring more stress. Deep rest focuses on reducing the cumulative biological cost of stress. This is not about working less. It is about leading better.
Because the most productive nervous system is not the one that is always switched on. It is the one that knows how to come home.
If you lead people, this matters
Creating sustainable resilience and wellbeing at work through a culture that supports not just high performance but deep rest too. Supporting rest and recovery for high performance. All of it begins with understanding the nervous system. And learning how to work with human biology, not against it.
If this resonates, feel free to message me. We can share a virtual coffee and, if you’re curious, even experience a short moment of NSDR, non-sleep deep rest, together.