How to say this gently…you’re going to have to give 10% less to make it through your work life with your health intact.

I’m not talking about “quiet quitting,” or doing the bare minimum. I’m talking about the diminishing returns that come from putting in 100%, when 90% effort would suffice. This is the artful balance between perfectionism and “good enough.”

You can be amazing at your job and not sacrifice your health. Yes, it’s possible. You just need to embrace a little bit of rebellion.

Somewhere along the way, we start to think about time as needing to be efficient. This leaves very little room for "useless" creative endeavors. Creativity and anxiety are closely intertwined - both need imagination. As Deepak Chopra put it, “The best use of imagination is creativity, the worst use of imagination is anxiety.” Not only are they two sides of the same coin, creative endeavors can in fact mitigate anxiety.

When we lie, we have to commit the lie to memory. Studies show that this action depletes precious cognitive resources, which could be used to down-regulate stress or up-regulate our rest-and-digest systems.

In a Notre Dame study of over 100 participants, those who told 3 fewer white lies a week experienced positive mental health outcomes. Their mental and physical symptoms of stress were roughly cut in half (a 54% and 56% decrease, respectively).

In every moment, your brain constructs a model of the outside world, transforming light waves, pressure changes, and chemicals into what you experience as your senses, like taste or sight. Your brain predicts what will happen next based on past experience and incoming sensory data to create what you experience as your life.

This constant “readiness” for the future requires complex budgeting - the brain calculates how much energy we have (salt, glucose, water), when we will be making more deposits (sleeping, eating, resting), and how much we predict we will expend (by activities, stressful environments, and bears in the woods). Our brains are very sophisticated accountants.

So why does stress (manufactured in our minds) lead to physical reactions in our bodies? It’s because our bodies can’t distinguish between real stressors and imagined stressors. When we think stressful or anxious thoughts, the sympathetic nervous system releases epinephrine (also known as adrenaline), sends extra blood to the heart and legs (to prep you for running), and restricts blood to the reproductive and digestive systems (since you likely won’t be using those fun systems while you run).

Downward counterfactuals are thoughts about how the situation could be worse. For instance - while you may not have gotten around to working on your side hustle today, at least you have a roof over your head. This practice is also known as…yes, you guessed it: gratitude. We realize gratitude is the new “live, laugh, love” motivational hashtag of today. But the science behind gratitude’s effect on mental health is well-substantiated.

Over the last two decades, hundreds of studies have shown that social connection provides a crucial buffer to stress.

Nowadays, as we start interacting again, many have complained that they don’t know how to socialize anymore, or that the act of socializing has started to spike social anxiety we didn’t even know we had. But the missing link to us feeling better, more in control, and with a brighter outlook for the future is social connection.

Many people talked about how their identities are closely tied to their productivity, accomplishments, to “running a million miles an hour.” It’s who we are, so it’s impossible to imagine who we would be if we just slowed down and didn’t strive so hard.

Sixty-nine percent of us are experiencing physical symptoms of stress at least every few days, and often daily. Seventy-four percent of us are experiencing emotional/mental symptoms of stress just as frequently.

What does that mean exactly? How does that show up for us?

But the moment I found myself in a new stressful environment, my old ways creeped back in - teeth grinding, work dreams, chest pains, irritation, and loads of guilt at neglecting the people important to me. It felt like I had slid back down a dark, slippery mountain.

That’s when I realized that you can do all the research and self-development you want, but until you have a community around you to support you, you won’t make it very far.