You think you're handling it.
You're showing up. You're meeting the deadlines. You're keeping it together. And maybe you are. On the outside. But your body is running a completely separate calculation, and it does not care how composed you look in a meeting.
I learned this the hard way.
A few years ago, I was deep in one of the most intense professional experiences of my career. The organization I worked for was navigating a major crisis, and I was helping to lead the response. For months, it consumed everything ... long days, high stakes, constant decisions, and very little breathing room.
I thought I was managing the stress well. I was performing. I was functional. I was fine.
And then I came down with shingles.
For those who haven't had it, shingles is a viral condition caused by the reactivation of the chickenpox virus. And it is almost universally triggered by one thing: a compromised immune system under prolonged stress. My body had been keeping a running tab on everything I thought I was managing so well. It presented the bill when I least expected it.
The mind can rationalize. The body just responds.
"This is just the norm we have quietly accepted."
The numbers are hard to ignore.
I wish my experience were unusual. It isn't.
According to Gallup's 2024 Global Workplace Report, 41% of employees globally report experiencing a lot of stress at work — and employees under poor management report high stress at rates nearly 30% higher than people who are unemployed. Read that again. Being stuck in the wrong job or the wrong environment can be more stressful than having no job at all.
The physical toll is equally alarming. Chronic workplace stress contributes to approximately 120,000 deaths in the United States every year, driven primarily by cardiovascular disease, burnout, and declining mental health. And it is not a distant or abstract risk. Nearly 85% of workers reported experiencing burnout or exhaustion in 2025, and more than 80% report losing sleep over work stress.
These are not edge cases. This is just the norm we have quietly accepted.
The problem is that we stop connecting the dots.
The tension headaches. The disrupted sleep. The weight changes, the short fuse, the low-grade irritability with the people you love most. We treat each of these as a separate inconvenience rather than what they actually are: a unified message from a system under too much strain.
We tell ourselves it's a busy season. We tell ourselves everyone feels this way. We wait for Friday.
I did the same thing. Right up until my immune system made the decision for me.
What makes chronic work stress particularly dangerous is precisely how manageable it feels in the moment. It rarely announces itself dramatically. It accumulates. It normalizes. And by the time your body sends an unmistakable signal, you have usually been running on empty for much longer than you realized.
So let me ask you something.
What is staying in this environment actually costing you? Not in theory — right now. In your energy. Your sleep. Your patience. Your health.
Most people have never stopped to answer that question honestly. They know something feels off, but they have not yet added it up. And one of the first things that gets quietly eroded — long before the shingles, long before the breaking point — is confidence. Not dramatically. Just a slow dimming of the self-assurance you used to take for granted.
If any of this sounds familiar, the first step is getting honest about where you are. That is what the Confidence Audit is for.