Think about the last time something important was on the line — maybe a conversation you knew you needed to have, or a decision that felt significant. In that moment, you might have noticed your body responding: heart beating faster, breathing becoming shallow, muscles tensing. These aren't random sensations — they're your system actively mobilizing energy and attention.
For many of us, these mobilizing signals have become constant background noise — a perpetual state of activation that never fully subsides. This ongoing mobilization exhausts us, leaving us relying on caffeine to re-energize, screens to distract, or simply trying to power through. While this pattern is common, it's not inevitable — there's another way to understand and work with these signals — and even a way to help them resolve.
When your system reacts with stress, it's responding to something it perceives as important. As Stanford health psychologist Kelly McGonigal explains, "Stress happens when something you care about is at stake."¹
You might be thinking: "But my stress often feels overwhelming, not helpful" or "Sometimes I get stressed about things that shouldn't matter that much" or even "My stress makes things worse, not better." These are natural responses, especially if stress has felt like an enemy for a long time. But even when stress feels overwhelming or excessive, it's still your system trying to help — perhaps trying too hard, but trying nonetheless.
Think about what's happening in your body during stress: Your racing heart is pumping extra blood to your brain and muscles. Your quickened breathing is getting more oxygen to your cells. Your heightened alertness is helping you notice details you might otherwise miss. It's like your body is pressing the gas pedal — mobilizing energy to help you meet whatever feels important in that moment.
For many of us, it can feel like we're constantly rushing between important destinations — work deadlines, family needs, relationship concerns — and never getting to take our foot off the gas. No wonder we feel exhausted! But when you begin to feel in your own experience that this activation is your system trying to help you attend to what matters, something profound starts to shift.
Consider how this mobilization helps you focus when it matters — rising to meet an unexpected challenge, bringing your full presence to an important moment, or stepping into a new opportunity. The stress response is your system providing the focused attention and energy needed to engage with what's significant in your life.
Take a moment to remember a time when stress helped you respond to something important — maybe it kept you alert during a long drive, helped you notice something was wrong with a friend, or gave you the energy to meet an unexpected challenge. Your system was mobilizing exactly what you needed in that moment.
Perceiving stress this way might feel very different from how you currently experience it. That's natural — most of us have spent years viewing stress as something to manage, reduce, or overcome. Yet even within your current experience of stress, you might notice moments that hint at a different possibility.
Our stress often clusters around the things that matter most to us — important conversations, work we care about doing well, relationships with colleagues and loved ones, decisions that shape our future. It makes sense that these situations bring up intense feelings — they're touching on things we care intensely about.
This different understanding of stress doesn't emerge overnight. It begins with curiosity. The next time you notice stress arising, you might pause — not to calm down or push through, but just to wonder what your system is trying to help you focus on. What feels important in this moment? What might be asking for your attention?
This isn't about managing stress better or becoming a different kind of person. It's about recognizing that your stress response is fundamentally an attention-focusing system. Every time it activates, it's trying to help you engage with something meaningful in your life — something your system recognizes as worthy of your full attention and energy.
The relief in this understanding runs deep: You don't need fixing. Your system isn't broken. It's been trying to help you all along — perhaps sometimes trying too hard, but always fundamentally on your side. As you begin to trust this, you might start noticing something remarkable: These signals contain not just messages about what matters, but the very energy needed to take action. The stress you've been fighting becomes a guide, showing you both what needs attention and providing the energy to address it.
Of course, sometimes stress shows up in situations that aren't actually threatening anymore — our bodies remembering old experiences rather than responding to the present moment. We'll explore how to work with these patterns later. For now, just recognizing that your system is trying to help you creates new possibilities. Each signal becomes an opportunity to understand what matters to you and move your life in a direction that feels genuinely your own.²
¹ McGonigal, Kelly. The Upside of Stress: Why Stress Is Good for You, and How to Get Good at It (2015)
² For those journeying through the 101 Days to Enjoying Existing course, we explore this practice of working with stress together in days 7-11. EnjoyExisting.org