My Thoughts
Stress: Stop Making It Your Lifestyle Choice When It's Actually Just Physics
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Stress isn't your personality trait, mate.
I've been watching people for the better part of two decades—first as a middle manager at a logistics company in Brisbane, then running my own consultancy—and I reckon 84% of us have got this stress thing completely arse-backwards. We wear it like a bloody badge of honour instead of recognising it for what it actually is: a biological response that's supposed to be temporary.
Last month, I was chatting with a client in Melbourne (let's call her Sarah because that's actually her name and she said I could use it) who proudly declared she "thrives on stress." This is the same woman who can't sleep past 4 AM, drinks seven coffees before lunch, and hasn't taken a proper holiday in three years. Thriving? More like slowly combusting.
Here's the thing that gets me riled up: somewhere along the way, we started confusing stress with productivity. As if being constantly wound up tighter than a two-dollar watch somehow makes us more valuable employees, better parents, or more successful humans. It's absolute rubbish.
The Physics of Pressure
Stress is physics, not psychology. Your body releases cortisol and adrenaline because your brain thinks a saber-toothed tiger is about to eat your face. Except instead of a tiger, it's your inbox. Or your mortgage. Or the fact that your teenager just announced they're dropping out of uni to become a TikTok influencer.
The stress response worked brilliantly when humans needed to outrun actual predators. Sprint away from danger, heart rate spikes, muscles get extra fuel, brain goes into hyper-focus mode. Problem solved, stress chemicals dissipate, back to normal. Beautiful system.
But we've managed to hack this ancient survival mechanism and turn it into our default operating mode. We're essentially living like we're being chased by invisible tigers 16 hours a day.
I used to be one of those people who prided myself on handling pressure. "Bring it on," I'd say, chest puffed out like some sort of corporate gladiator. What an absolute muppet I was. Took a minor heart episode at 42 to wake me up to the fact that my body wasn't impressed by my heroic stress tolerance.
The Australian Stress Olympics
We've turned stress into a competitive sport in this country. You know the conversations I'm talking about—the ones where everyone tries to out-busy each other:
"How are you going?" "Oh, you know, flat out like a lizard drinking!" "Tell me about it, I haven't sat down all week!" "Week? I can't remember the last time I had a proper weekend!"
And we all nod along like this is something to be proud of. Like being permanently frazzled is evidence of our importance or work ethic.
But here's what I've noticed in my years of working with teams across Sydney, Perth, and everywhere in between: the people who constantly broadcast their stress levels aren't actually the most productive. They're usually the most disorganised.
The genuinely effective people I know—and I'm thinking specifically of a facilities manager at Qantas who handles about 47 crises before morning tea—they treat stress as information, not identity.
When Stress Becomes Your Flatmate
There's a massive difference between experiencing stress and living in stress. One is natural and healthy. The other is like having a really annoying flatmate who never cleans up after themselves and always leaves the toilet seat up.
Healthy stress shows up, does its job, then leaves. It's the rush you get before a big presentation that sharpens your focus and helps you perform. It's the nervous energy that pushes you to prepare properly for an interview. It comes, it serves its purpose, it goes.
Chronic stress, on the other hand, moves in permanently. It rearranges your furniture, eats your food, and criticises your life choices. This is when stress stops being a useful biological function and starts being a lifestyle choice—usually an unconscious one.
I see this constantly in the workplace bullying training sessions I run. People who've been operating in high-stress environments for so long they've forgotten what calm feels like. They mistake anxiety for alertness, tension for readiness.
The Stress Addiction Nobody Talks About
Here's something that might make you uncomfortable: some of us are genuinely addicted to stress. Not in a metaphorical way—in an actual, neurochemical way.
When you're constantly stressed, your brain starts producing stress hormones as your new normal. Take away the stress, and you feel flat, unmotivated, even depressed. So you unconsciously create drama, take on too much work, or pick fights with your partner just to get that familiar chemical hit.
I had a business partner years ago—brilliant bloke, could solve problems like nobody's business—but he couldn't function without crisis. If things were running smoothly for more than a week, he'd find something to worry about or manufacture some urgent deadline. Took me ages to realise he wasn't just neurotic; he was literally dependent on the adrenaline.
The irony is that stress addiction makes you less capable of handling actual emergencies. When everything feels urgent, nothing is urgent. When you're always at DEFCON 1, you've got nowhere to go when real problems arise.
The Productivity Myth That's Killing Us
Let me share some uncomfortable truth: most of what we label as "high performance under pressure" is actually just frantic activity masquerading as productivity.
Real productivity comes from clarity, not chaos. It comes from having enough mental bandwidth to think strategically instead of just reacting to whatever's screaming loudest for attention.
I've worked with sales teams who were convinced they needed the stress of impossible targets to perform. But when we actually tracked their numbers over six months, their best results consistently came during their calmest periods. Less stress, better decision-making, stronger client relationships, higher conversion rates.
The whole "pressure creates diamonds" thing? Diamonds take millions of years to form under consistent, steady pressure. Not the frantic, fluctuating pressure we put ourselves under trying to respond to every email within three minutes.
The Melbourne Coffee Shop Revelation
A few months back, I was in a coffee shop in Fitzroy (yes, it had exposed brick walls and served coffee in jars—sue me) when I overheard two women discussing their stress management strategies. One was listing all the things she did to cope: meditation apps, yoga classes, essential oils, special teas, weekend retreats.
The other woman listened politely, then said something that stopped me mid-sip: "Have you considered just doing less stuff?"
Genius. Absolute genius.
We've created this entire industry around managing stress without questioning whether we need to be creating so much of it in the first place. It's like building elaborate drainage systems instead of just turning off the tap.
Sometimes the most radical stress management strategy is saying no. To the extra project. To the committee position. To the social obligation that makes you want to hide under your doona.
What Stress Actually Wants to Tell You
Here's the thing nobody mentions in those corporate wellness seminars: stress is often your unconscious mind's way of getting your attention. It's like a smoke alarm going off—annoying as hell, but usually pointing to something that needs addressing.
That knot in your stomach every Sunday night? Your job might be slowly crushing your soul.
The tension in your shoulders that never goes away? You might be carrying responsibilities that aren't actually yours.
The racing thoughts that keep you awake at 2 AM? You might be trying to control things that are fundamentally uncontrollable.
I spent years treating stress symptoms instead of stress causes. Bought all the apps, tried all the techniques, attended workshops on stress reduction. But until I addressed the underlying issues—saying yes to too many things, working for people whose values didn't align with mine, trying to be everything to everyone—the stress just kept coming back.
The Permission to Be Ordinary
One of the most liberating realisations I've had in my forties is that I don't need to be exceptional at everything. Or anything, really. Most of life is meant to be ordinary.
We've created this culture where baseline contentment is somehow insufficient. Everything needs to be optimised, maximised, life-hacked into peak performance. But what if good enough is actually good enough?
What if you could just do your job competently without being passionate about it? What if you could be a decent parent without being Pinterest-perfect? What if you could have an average day and consider it a success because nothing went dramatically wrong?
This isn't about lowering standards or giving up ambition. It's about recognising that sustainable success looks more like steady consistency than dramatic peaks and valleys.
The Australian Solution
You know what I love about working with Australian teams? When we finally give ourselves permission to address stress honestly, we're actually pretty practical about it.
We don't need complicated systems or expensive solutions. We need better boundaries, clearer priorities, and the courage to admit when we're taking on too much.
We need to stop glorifying busy and start celebrating effective. We need to remember that being permanently stressed doesn't make us more valuable—it makes us less available for the things that actually matter.
Most importantly, we need to understand that choosing a calmer approach to work and life isn't opting out of success. It's opting into sustainability.
Stress will always be part of life. But it doesn't have to be your whole life.
The choice is yours. Every single day.
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