How might stress be a good thing?

Stress gets a pretty bad reputation.

And to be fair, when it is chronic, overwhelming, and feels inescapable, it can absolutely wear people down. Too much stress for too long can affect mood, sleep, concentration, health, relationships, and performance. That part is real.

But I do not think that is the whole story.

Because not all stress is harmful.

Sometimes stress is what helps us rise to the occasion. It is the flutter before a presentation that helps us prepare properly. It is the pressure of a meaningful deadline that sharpens our focus. It is the stretch of learning something new that feels uncomfortable, but also energising. In organisational psychology, researchers often distinguish between challenge stressors and hindrance stressors. Challenge stressors are demands that can feel difficult but potentially worthwhile, such as responsibility, time pressure, or a complex project. Hindrance stressors are the kinds of pressures that tend to get in the way, such as red tape, role confusion, office politics, or unnecessary obstacles.

That distinction matters.

Because the goal is probably not to remove every trace of stress from work or life. A life with no challenge at all would not necessarily be peaceful or fulfilling. It might just be flat. The more useful goal is to understand the difference between the kind of stress that helps people grow, and the kind that leaves them depleted, cynical, and running on empty. Reviews of the challenge–hindrance literature suggest that some demands can support motivation and performance, but even challenge stressors still create strain, which is why support and recovery remain so important.

The stress we often need

Think about some of the moments in your life when you have grown the most.

There is a good chance stress was somewhere in the mix.

Starting a new job. Speaking in public for the first time. Becoming a parent. Taking on more responsibility. Studying again after years away from formal learning. Having a courageous conversation you have been avoiding. Stretching yourself physically. Launching a business. Leading through change.

None of these are stress-free experiences.

But many of them can be deeply meaningful. They ask something of us. They require effort, adjustment, and courage. And often, they help us become more capable.

That is why the idea of eustress is so helpful. Eustress is often described as a more positive, energising form of stress. It is still activation. It is still pressure. But it tends to be linked with challenge, growth, meaning, and the belief that we can handle what is in front of us. Recent work on eustress argues that it is associated with wellbeing, performance, and personal growth, although the field is still refining exactly how best to define and measure it.

This fits with what many of us know from experience.

The best days at work are not always the easiest ones. Often they are the days where we used our skills well, tackled something meaningful, and felt stretched in a way that was demanding but worthwhile.

When stress tips from helpful to harmful

Of course, this does not mean stress is always good. Far from it.

The line between helpful stress and harmful stress can be surprisingly thin.

A deadline might feel motivating when you have enough time, clarity, and support. The very same deadline can feel crushing when your workload is already unrealistic, expectations are unclear, and you have had poor sleep for a week.

A promotion can feel exciting when it comes with training, support, and a manageable transition. It can feel overwhelming when someone is thrown in the deep end and expected to magically know how to lead people well.

The pressure itself is not the whole story. What matters is how the pressure is experienced.

Does it feel meaningful or pointless? Temporary or relentless? Manageable or impossible? Chosen or imposed? Do I have some control? Do I have support? Can I recover afterwards?

That is one reason why challenge stressors do not always lead to positive outcomes. A 2024 meta-analysis of daily diary studies found that challenge stressors can have a positive direct effect on daily performance, but they also create strain, which can indirectly hurt performance. Hindrance stressors, meanwhile, were linked to poorer performance both directly and through strain. In plain English: even the “good” kind of stress still costs us something.

I think that is such an important reminder for leaders.

You cannot just keep increasing the challenge and assume it will keep producing growth.

At some point, challenge becomes overload.

And overload is where people start to lose clarity, patience, perspective, and resilience.

What makes stress more likely to help rather than harm?

From both the research and real life, a few things seem to matter a lot.

1. It needs to feel manageable – Helpful stress tends to come with a sense of, “This is hard, but I can do it.”

Not, “This is impossible and I am drowning.”

That feeling of manageability is shaped by many things: skill, confidence, past experience, support, time, resources, and whether expectations are clear. If people feel underprepared, isolated, or powerless, even relatively small demands can start to feel threatening rather than stretching. Research on eustress and challenge stress points repeatedly to appraisal — how a person interprets the demand — as a key part of whether stress feels enhancing or harmful.

2. It helps when the effort feels meaningful – People can tolerate a surprising amount of pressure when they can see why it matters.

Meaning changes things.

If a challenge connects with someone’s values, goals, identity, or sense of contribution, it is more likely to feel worthwhile. That does not make it easy, but it does make it easier to engage with. Research reviewing challenge and hindrance stress has found that demands seen as opportunities for growth or achievement are more likely to function as challenge stressors than those seen as unnecessary obstacles.

3. Recovery is not optional – This one matters enormously.

Even if the stress is meaningful. Even if it is helping someone perform. Even if it is chosen.

People still need recovery.

The body and brain are not designed to stay switched on indefinitely. Helpful stress can become harmful very quickly when there is no space to rest, process, or reset. The more recent daily-diary evidence is especially useful here because it shows that challenge stressors may boost short-term performance while still increasing strain. That is why sleep, breaks, boundaries, and recovery are not luxuries. They are what stop challenge from sliding into distress.

4. Mindset seems to play a role too – This does not mean “just think positive” and everything will be fine. But beliefs about stress do appear to matter.

Research on stress mindset suggests that people who more strongly believe stress can be enhancing tend to report better coping and lower distress, and education can shift stress mindset in a more helpful direction. There is also emerging evidence that a more stress-is-enhancing mindset is associated with better performance and more adaptive responses in stressful situations. That does not mean mindset overrides everything else, but it does suggest that how we interpret our stress response can influence what happens next.

I find that encouraging.

Because it means that one helpful question is not just, “How do I get rid of this stress?”

It might also be, “What is this stress asking of me, and how can I meet it well?”

What this means for leaders

If you lead people, this matters.

Because supporting wellbeing at work is not about removing every challenge from someone’s life. In fact, that would probably be impossible, and not especially helpful.

People often want meaningful work. They want to grow. They want to contribute. They want to feel stretched in good ways.

The real leadership task is to create conditions where challenge is more likely to be experienced as energising and worthwhile, rather than chaotic and crushing.

That might mean:

• setting clear priorities so people are not trying to do everything at once
• reducing pointless friction, ambiguity, and unnecessary bureaucracy
• making sure support matches expectations
• helping people build skills before the pressure peaks
• encouraging recovery and not glorifying exhaustion
• framing stretch opportunities as learning, not just proving grounds

In other words, do not just ask more of people.  Help them carry it well.

Because a team does not become resilient by avoiding all pressure.

It becomes resilient by learning how to meet pressure with the right mix of challenge, capability, support, and recovery. Research on challenge and hindrance stressors increasingly points to that more nuanced view: challenge can be productive, but only when organisations are also paying attention to the strain it creates and the conditions that shape how it is experienced.

So, how might stress be a good thing?

Perhaps stress can be a good thing when it wakes us up rather than wears us down.

When it helps us care, prepare, focus, and grow.

When it is connected to something meaningful.

When it stretches us without snapping us.

When it is followed by rest.

When it reminds us that we are doing something that matters.

That does not mean we should romanticise stress or ignore the real harm that chronic overload can do.

But it does mean we can stop treating all stress as the enemy.

Sometimes stress is a signal that life is asking something important of us.

And sometimes, with the right support, it is exactly the pressure that helps us become more capable than we were before.