How to Handle Stress and Perform at Their Best (Without Burning Out)

A calm mind is a powerful mind.

I’m reminded of this often.

And I forget it on occasion.

Particularly when I’m stressed.

Whether you’re:

• Building a business,

• Pursuing your career,

• Moving houses or countries,

• Going through a milestone transition

• Running multiple projects, or

• Juggling personal and professional responsibilities,

... during these periods of high stress, being calm feels like something out of reach.

So instead, we normalise:

• Drink 5 coffees and being jittery

• Dreams of unfinished work

• Thoughts that never stop

• Snapping at loved ones

• Dropping our good habits

• Doing things to 'take the edge off'

But is it really normal?

Is it normal to ‘do your best work under pressure’?

Is it normal to snap at your loved ones because you’re a ‘little on edge’?

Is it normal for your fitness goals to go off the rails and then punish yourself for it?

Does stress have to be this normal thing that leads to physical changes in your brain structure, impaired cognition, dysregulated emotions, a weak immune system and other chronic illnesses?

Stress is always going to be in our lives (because it’s a part of our biology and evolution), but it doesn’t have to control us.

Instead, when you understand how stress works, you can use it to your advantage and protect yourself against its harmful effects while optimising for its benefits.

Stress isn’t something to fear.

It can be a potent tool that sharpens your performance when you know how to handle it.

I’ve grown pretty familiar with stress over the last few years.

In 2022, I was doing my last year of university, training to compete in kickboxing, in a leadership position and running my first business.

On paper, it was a recipe for burnout (which did end up happening).

But ironically, I’ve found myself back in a similar position in 2025: I’m working full-time, doing my post-grad and building my personal brand.

Yet, this year I haven’t burnt out, and stress has not derailed me like it had in the past.

Sure, there were moments of intense overwhelm and stress, but I didn’t break down or spiral out of control.

I managed to keep a level head, stable emotions and remain focused and get things done.

I still have the clarity and calm to keep moving forward without sacrificing my health or personal relationships.

When I reflected on why this year was better than 2022, a few things were clear, but the key thing was:

I had built a new relationship with stress.

A relationship where I was not controlled by it.

It also became clear that, as common as stress is, we’ve never been taught how to deal with it.

2022 was a new kind of experience with stress for me, and I’m sure there will be more.

But this year has been a great lesson in understanding what stress is and how to handle it.

For so long, we’ve been taught that stress is always bad and to treat it as an enemy.

But if it’s something we will experience for life, is it not worth learning how to handle and use it better?

And here are some of the things I’ve learned about stress.

The Basics of Stress

In its simplest form, stress is the body’s psychological and physiological response to anything challenging or perceived as a threat.

Maybe you’ve heard how it’s an evolutionary response our ancestors had that saved them from being killed by animals.

And though this is true, there’s something that’s not often highlighted about the stress response:

The stress response is a general system.

This means it doesn’t know the difference between a real threat (a lion chasing you), an approaching deadline or an imagined scenario in your head.

To your brain and nervous system, this is all the same, and it will respond the same:

Heart racing, cortisol release and spike, focus sharpened, body ready to fight, flight or fawn.

These short bursts of stress can be good for you. They give you a burst of energy, clarity and drive.

This is why most people believe and perform better under pressure or on a tight deadline.

This ‘shot’ of stress acts as an enhancer in your performance.

The danger, and what most people think about when they talk about stress, is chronic stress.

This is the stress that is constantly present and ongoing (weeks, months or years).

The kind of stress that changes the structure of your brain and poses a serious threat to your well-being and health.

Stress In the Body and Brain

Here are some of the effects and changes chronic stress has on your brain:

• Your amygdala (area of the brain responsible for emotional processing) gets bigger and more sensitive.

  Particularly, the sensitivity is towards anxiety and fear.

  So when you are irritable, anxious or snapping at loved ones, the amygdala is the part of your brain that’s active and hijacked by stress.

• Your hippocampus (area of the brain responsible for memory and learning) shrinks.

  And a smaller hippocampus leads to forgetfulness, difficulty learning and forming new memories.

• Your pre-frontal cortex (area of the brain responsible for executive control, decision-making, planning, personality expression and more) weakens.

  This is why when you’re stressed, you can be more impulsive, struggle to regulate emotions or think long-term.

• Your neural synapses also weaken.

  This means the communication between your brain regions is slow. You become less adaptable, struggle with learning and have less resilience.

It’s clear that stress literally rewires your brain and makes you a weaker person.

And the longer you let it control you, the worse things get.

But not all hope is lost.

You can rewire and protect yourself against these negative effects of stress, as well as become more capable of handling it.

Protecting Yourself Against Stress

So the good news is that you can reverse the negative impact of stress.

(I repeat not all hope is lost).

The same neuroplasticity and mechanisms that let chronic stress negatively rewire your brain can be used to positively rewire your brain to manage stress.

One way to think of stress is like a fire.

Fire is a kind of energy.

A small fire can bring light to a room, help you cook a meal and keep you warm.

But leave that small fire unchecked, and it can burn down an entire house.

If you’re an Avatar: The Last Airbender fan (going back to the fire analogy), it’s like Aang’s journey with learning and mastering firebending.

At first, he was a little careless and reckless with it, which led to him burning Katara.

He saw it as a dangerous element and didn’t want to master it, but as the Avatar, he needed to master all four elements, which includes fire.

In Book 3, he takes steps to rebuild his relationship with fire.

It’s not easy, and it doesn’t happen all at once.

When he meets the Sun Warriors (and eventually the two great firebending masters and dragons, Ran and Shaw), he gains a new perspective.

Leading to one of my favourite scenes and an underappreciated explanation of fire:

I want a similar shift to happen for you when it comes to stress.

To shift from seeing it as a damaging thing to avoid like the plague, but to learn how to harness it for your performance.

You’re not attempting to eliminate stress.

You want to understand it and master it.

Because when you learn to:

• Recognise stress in real time,

• Manage it before it becomes chronic,

• Build resilience in your brain and body

You stop being at the mercy of stress and leverage it as a tool. Like a weapon in your arsenal.

This is the shift that separates who I am now from who I was 3 years ago.

It’s the shift that will help you play the long game, operate at a high level sustainably and build the life and business you want without sacrificing your health or relationships.

How To Manage Stress

Here are some of the frameworks and tools I’ve used to handle stress and keep performing at a high level without developing chronic stress or burning out:

1. Establish your baseline health

Your baseline determines your stress tolerance.

You want to have a baseline health standard that you can maintain when you are highly stressed.

Key elements to consider:

• Sleep 7–9 hours.

  It’s unfortunate that the first thing to go when we are highly stressed and bombarded with work is our sleep.

  Getting as much sleep as possible when you’re highly stressed is crucial because sleep literally clears stress-related damage in the brain and helps you return to baseline.

• Exercise (minimum 2 - 3 times a week).

  Exercise reduces inflammation, boosts neurogenesis, and regulates cortisol. As hectic as things can get, building a strong body builds a strong mind, and that helps in building the discipline and resiliency to manage stress.

• Walk.

  Walking calms the nervous system and resets focus. It’s a great way to stay moving if you really struggle to create an exercise foundation. At least through walking, you’re still moving every day.

• Nutrition & hydration.

  High caffeine, processed foods, alcohol, excess sugar, etc., are all stressors to the body and brain. When you ingest these during high-stress seasons, thinking you’re 'calming' yourself down, you’re actually increasing your stress. Instead, you want to make stable and frequent meals made of whole foods and good hydration (2 -3L) your base.

2. Learn your “stress-eating style”

Something I became aware of pretty quickly when I’m stressed is how my appetite and eating habits change.

In the past, I used to eat more when I was stressed.

This has gotten better over the years, but I still tend to snack more when stressed.

You might eat less or eat more unhealthy foods.

The main premise of this step is awareness.

You want to become aware of your eating style when you’re stressed, so you can manage it in a way that doesn’t negatively affect you.

As you establish a baseline nutrition, this will improve, but you can only improve what you are aware of.

You can take this a step further and apply it to other habits (social media consumption, substances, sleep, etc.), but I think a good place to start is with your eating.

3. Go-to tools

You can downshift stress in real-time. Tools like:

• The physiological sigh (two inhales, one long exhale) to calm the nervous system (from Dr Andrew Huberman).

• Meditation. Even 10 minutes can make all the difference.

4. Regular check-ins

Most people don’t know how stressed they are until they crash. Get into the habit of self-auditing.

You can either do solo check-ins or check-ins with another person:

• Journal/ self-inquiry: “Where am I on a scale of 1–10 today?”

• Letting someone else know that you’re stressed seems so simple, but it’s helped me so much this year.

It can be a simple check-in before bed.

5. Lean on your circle

Stress is heavier when carried alone.

Even short conversations (a quick call, a message to a friend) can reduce the emotional load and give you the space to breathe.

6. Prioritise rest after the storm

The biggest reason stress becomes chronic or can lead to burnout is that people never return to baseline.

They power through, pile new projects on top, and ignore recovery.

What I’ve done is: after any high-stress period, I intentionally take the next day or two days to rest and give myself downtime.

This can look like anything from sleeping more, eating well, connecting with friends and family, or just kicking it back and ‘lazing around’.

This way, you also learn what rest and a relaxed state feel like, which makes you more aware of when stress is high.

Stress isn’t going anywhere. Not in business. Not in life.

But you don’t have to be its victim.

With the right tools, you can:

• Stay calm under pressure.

• Protect your brain and body.

• Perform at your best without burning out.

A calm mind is a powerful mind.

And as a high-performer, stress isn’t something to avoid — it’s your competitive edge.

Thank you for reading.

I hope you enjoyed it.

See you in the next one.

— Shana