Before we outsource our last homework assignment or household chore to AI and embrace a work-free-stress-free lifestyle, let’s set the record straight: Stress is not your enemy.
In fact, if you’re actively trying to eliminate all stress from your life, you are, without a doubt, eliminating more good from your life than you’re gaining.
Too little stress — physical, mental, or otherwise — can be just as harmful as too much.
Take astronauts, for instance.
When they go into space, they remove one of the most basic stressors of human life: gravity. Without that constant downward force, their muscles and bones have no reason to stay as strong.
NASA requires its astronauts to engage in two hours of high-intensity exercise every day they are in space. This regimen helps today’s astronauts retain almost all (90-95%) of their bone density. Back in the day, astronauts came back to Earth with losses in bone density similar to decades of age-related bone loss on Earth.
Both then and now, these high-performance humans need time to recover from a low-stress environment, to re-adapt to the gravitational pull that keeps the air that we breathe, the water we drink and the people we love from floating into oblivion. (Arguably much more stressful circumstances than gravity itself.)
As much as too much stress exhausts our systems, a lack of stress makes them fragile.
It’s no different in business.
Some of you may have the great fortune of recognizing the parallels between the experience of an astronaut returning to Earth and your experience working for a moon-shot-taking, market-making monopoly. Without sufficient competition (stress!), the business became weak and unable to adapt quickly in the face of sudden disruption.
(And into oblivion it went….)
It’s not rocket science: when we challenge the limits of our capacity – physical or professional – we expand our capacity, which means the things that previously stressed us out no longer do. In a way, if you want to experience less stress over the course of your life, embracing stress is a much better strategy than avoiding stress.
Interestingly, the very idea of stress as it relates to human beings (beyond physics and engineering) was introduced by a Canadian endocrinologist, Hans Selye.
Through his research, he observed what we now call the General Adaptation Syndrome — the process by which our bodies respond to stress. It has three phases:
- Alarm
- Adaptation
- Exhaustion
Stress is not something to avoid — it’s what humans (and all lifeforms) are designed for.
The winning formula is:
- Progressive bouts of stress (in the gym or in your career)
- Recovery in between (no, binge eating, doom scrolling and tequila shots do not count.)
Striking a healthy balance is what leads to growth, resilience, and long-term success.
So let’s stop talking about every challenging experience (a broken elevator forcing you to take the stairs, navigating professional disagreements, an overly chatty neighbour) as if it’s bad for you. If anything, in many cases, the opposite is true.