The Hidden Cost of Pushing Through

This kind of thinking lives in many of our heads. And to be fair, it's sound survival-mode logic: you don't stop to rest while being chased by a lion. You run until you're safe.

But here's the question most of us forget to ask:

Am I still in the jungle?
Is this pressure truly urgent?

More often than not, the answer is no.

I'm not here to promote debauchery or laziness. I'm here to challenge hustle culture and offer a gentle reminder: we're no longer being chased. We're allowed to bring softness into the way we work, live, and move through the world.

And it's not just a nice idea — it's necessary and here are some reasons why.

1. Stress Undermines the Neural Conditions for Peak Performance

The prefrontal cortex — the brain's conductor - manages your attention, filters information, and helps you stay focused and effective. But under stress, this conductor gets overloaded. It starts dropping batons and things slip through the cracks.

The result? You slow down. Your quality drops. The project suffers.

Here are some examples that might resonate:

You've got three projects this quarter — and fifteen tabs open for each one. Plus a few rabbit holes for good measure.

You tell yourself, "I'll clean it all up once the project's done. I can manage for now."

But the truth is, all that digital clutter and constant context switching is slowing you down.

Your brain is spending precious energy just trying to remember what lives where. This kind of clutter overloads your prefrontal cortex, reducing efficiency. The wiser move? Take 15 minutes to close what you're not using and set up clear focus blocks on your calendar.

You carry three heavy grocery bags in one trip — convinced it's faster than making two?

You're gripping, readjusting, sweating… one avocado rolls under a car.

But hey, you're "saving time," right?

Except your arm hurts, your eggs are cracked, and the walk took twice as long.

Might the wiser move is to pause, set the bag down, and find a trolley or make two trips.

(And for the advanced soft-life students: pop in your headphones and enjoy the walk.)

It's really about creating a High-Performing Neural Environment (HPNE) - clearing the mental clutter, lightening the load, and setting your precious brain up to do what it does best.

Because when your conductor is overwhelmed, everything plays off-key.

2. Creativity and Connection

If you're like me, and you care deeply about connection — about being liked, understood, and truly seen — this might hit home.

When you lead a softer life at work, softness in your relationships becomes easier too.

One reason is that the habits that serve us in high-efficiency, high-stakes environments — intensity, logic, control — often follow us home. We carry them into our personal lives without realizing it, and they quietly sabotage our ability to be light, open, and creative.

In addition, while your career might reward habits mentioned above in the short-term, the further you grow in your career, the more relational ease becomes essential — to delegate well, collaborate, and build trust at every level.

So why does connection feel even harder when you're stressed?

There's a physiological reason — and it has everything to do with how your brain handles pressure.

Enter our friend, the prefrontal cortex (PFC) — again. When it's overloaded, it becomes harder to access creativity, humor, playfulness, and presence. Your social brain goes offline, and fear and self-criticism turn up the volume.

From a polyvagal perspective, you're not in a "rest and connect" state — you're in "the lion is chasing me" mode.

And it shows.

You may find yourself worrying:

• "What if they don't like me?"
• "Do I sound smart enough?"
• "Am I being too much? Not enough?"
• "Should I have smiled more? Or less? Was that a weird smile?"
• "Why did I say 'no worries' five times? Was I… worried?"
• "Gosh, I'm never using this perfume again."
• And maybe not that laugh either.

This isn't connection — it's survival.

And most of us have felt the difference: how easy and open we feel around people when we're calm… versus how guarded or awkward it feels when we're carrying stress in our bodies.

The truth is, your presence is your superpower — but chronic stress hijacks it.

The stress I refer to here isn't the kind that sharpens you in a burst — like adrenaline before a big moment. It's the low-grade, background noise kind. The kind that clutters your internal space like a messy room, dulls your spark, and makes connection feel like one more task to manage.

3. Stress on the Body

The pain in your back.
The bed of acne on your face.
The ache in your hip.
The stiffness in your shoulders.
The anxiety diarrhea (you know the one).
The headaches. The eye tension. The wrist pain...

Many of us live with some combination of these — quietly, constantly. So, if your neck just tensed up a little — you're not alone. Just take a deep breath and stay with me please.

(The book The Mindbody Prescription by Dr. John Sarno comes to mind here.)

There's a whole booming industry around back pain alone — offering fixes like specific exercises, medications, ergonomic chairs, posture hacks, back braces, wrist braces, what could we brace next. And while these can be helpful, they often don't touch the root.

If you really want to get to the bottom of it, you have to ask:

What is this tension protecting me from?

This tension isn't random — it's your body trying to adapt.

When we're under chronic stress, the body either:

Overcompensates — tightening and overfiring to keep us going,

Or under-resources — shutting down less "urgent" systems to focus on survival.

It's no wonder our bodies hurt.

We're carrying loads our nervous systems were never designed to bear for this long.

And one of the most subtle — and powerful — ways that weight shows up?

The way we breathe.

Under stress, the breath becomes shallow and rapid — trapped in the chest, restricted and tight. Over time, this limits oxygen flow and keeps the body in a low-grade state of tension. We lose access to slow, expansive breathing — the kind that supports vagal tone, regulates the nervous system, and restores a sense of ease. Longer, more intentional exhalations, in particular, are known to activate the vagus nerve and help shift the body out of fight-or-flight mode.

The nervous system thinks we're running.
The body never fully lands.
The body keeps adapting.

But that's not the same as healing.

So what would it look like to stop bracing — and start breathing again?

4. Unhealthy Coping Responses

This one looks different for everyone — for some it's overeating, for others it's doomscrolling, overspending, snapping at loved ones, or simply checking out.

But why do we fall into these habits?

Yet again, it comes back to stress and the brain. When you're under stress, your decision-making capacity is compromised. The prefrontal cortex — the part of your brain that helps with discipline, reflection, and long-term thinking — isn't functioning at full capacity. So habits you're trying to shift (diet, exercise, time management) tend to get worse, not better.

You can't logic your way out of a coping loop when your brain is literally wired for relief.

One of my personal classics in this mode:

"It's okay, I'm stressed — I deserve this giant spoon of peanut butter," even though I know it'll probably invite at least two new acne nodules by tomorrow morning.

In that moment, short-term relief wins — because stress makes long-term clarity harder to access.

It's not a character flaw. It's the brain, trying to self-soothe the only way it knows how.

So… What If You Let It Be Easier?

We live in a world that glorifies pushing through — where exhaustion is worn like a badge of honor and softness is mistaken for laziness.

But what if softness isn't weakness?
What if it's wisdom?
What if choosing ease is one of the most strategic, self-loving things you could do?

You don't have to earn your rest. You don't have to suffer to be worthy.

You are allowed to live, work, and grow from a place of grounded clarity — not constant urgency.

If you're curious about what it means to live with more ease — to soften, not just in theory but in practice — stay tuned to my YouTube Channel for my upcoming video, where I share tips on how I personally bring more softness into the minutes of my days, and how you could for yourself.

It's a gentle companion to this piece — a small step toward unwinding the hustle and reconnecting with the part of you that already knows how to rest, feel, and flow.

I also invite you to explore some of the guided meditations I've created on YouTube. They're soft, spacious, and designed to help you reconnect with yourself — gently.

Here's to choosing softness — not as an escape, but as a way of returning to your power.

Much love