Most stress isn’t the workload. It’s the story a person tells about the workload, and a researcher who studies wellbeing explains why the exact same amount of “too much” can either feel exciting or feel like drowning, depending entirely on that framing. She also names a slower, quieter danger: a kind of behavioural drift where people keep saying yes to things nobody actually needs, until busyness itself becomes the whole identity.
The fix isn’t rest, and it isn’t fewer responsibilities. It’s a specific, tested practice, run on roughly two thousand people across several countries, that lowers measurable stress and anxiety within two weeks without asking for one extra minute of anyone’s day. There’s also a case made for boredom itself, the thing modern life has almost entirely engineered out of daily routines, and why losing it might be costing more than anyone realizes.
There’s a ten-second mirror habit in here too, deliberately ridiculous, meant for first thing every morning. It sounds like nothing. People who try it don’t agree.
Topics: how to de-stress, nature and stress research, self-inflicted stress, boredom and creativity, connecting with nature
GUEST: Dr. Holli-Anne Passmore | http://nmil.ca
Originally aired on2026-09-03
