Stress Can Be a Good Thing

"Pressure creates diamonds" on the athletic field - and in the operating room

Warm regards from frozen New Jersey. Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston have landed on something interesting in a recent study on surgeons: When the surgeons’ stress levels went up in the initial minutes of an operation, the end result had fewer complications.

Usually, we associate stress with a lot of negative things. This goes for health, workplace performance, and elite athletics. When archers in the 2020 Olympic Games were outfitted with heart monitors, those with the lowest heart rate (one indicator of stress) scored better.

But don’t stress too much about too much stress. There’s a wealth of newer research on the positive benefits of getting a dose of stress — particularly for performance.

It sounds counterintuitive. But most of this derives from the work of Canadian psychologist Hans Selye, who coined the term “eustress” in the 1970s (eu meaning “good” in Greek) to describe what he called “healthy” or positive stress.

Eustress isn’t a syndrome; it is defined primarily by how someone perceives a particular stressor. A popular example is someone heading up a roller coaster ride. For some, a roller coaster is a stressful ride that is perceived positively — in fact, thrill-seekers want to engage with that type of stress. For others, it produces a negative reaction. Eustress for some can be dis-stress for others, with harmful outcomes.

“Good” stress isn’t just reserved for certain cohorts of people, though. It’s arguably a requirement for anyone to reach peak performance.

Speaking of roller coasters, the classic depiction of the relationship between stress and performance is actually an inverted U-curve.

Yerkes-Dodson Law

To get to that performance apex, a substantial level of arousal is required. Some of this is biological. Encountering a stressful situation triggers the sympathetic nervous system, the “fight or flight” mechanism, and gets adrenaline pumping, glucose flowing, and blood pressure rising. This can make you more alert and reactive, sharpen your senses, and activate cognitive activity.

While prior research has looked into how surgeons react to stressful situations that crop up in the middle of a procedure, the Boston researchers this time opted to measure heart-rate variability¹ in 38 attending surgeons during the first 5 minutes of an operation. This was to ensure that the surgeons’ stress level was self-induced and not influenced by how the procedure was going.

They saw, across the board, some big jumps in stress levels, regardless of their experience. However, the stress didn’t make the surgeons worse. They worked better under pressure.

Not surprisingly, the study’s authors said they were inspired by research on elite athletes, who constantly have to make decisions and face challenging circumstances. An entire industry of mental coaching has arisen in the past two decades to offer motivational and/or coping methods to reach peak performance without cracking under pressure.

The tipping point at which one cracks and begins to slide down the backside of the inverted U is an area that needs further research. But, again, successful elite athletes can offer instructive examples. Phrases like “pressure creates diamonds” and “pressure is a privilege” are common mantras that are employed to reinforce the notion that stress can be good for performance, taking the negativity around it and flipping it on its head.

Admittedly, I’d be a little nervous if my surgeon walked in hyping himself up and wearing eye black. But here is a way sports psychology can have a lot to offer us — and maybe even improve our health. The researchers hope their study will lead to more uptake of HRV in operating rooms as a stress monitor, just as high-level athletes use wearables and train to be skilled at intentionally bringing stress levels down or up, depending on where they are at.

The lessons shared by athletes about stress and performance can benefit professionals in almost any setting, whether it’s a writer trying to finish a story on deadline (gulp), a student facing midterms, or a CEO pitching to investors.

As we embark on a new year, try not to only think of stress as a negative. It could be your best springboard toward success.

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Keep an eye out for more free newsletters coming soon. And reach out to let me know if there are topics you feel would be worth exploring. Cheers

Links

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References

Awtry J, Skinner S, Polazzi S, et al. (2025) Association Between Surgeon Stress and Major Surgical Complications. JAMA Surg.

1. Actually, they used a ratio based on the heart-rate variability data (low frequency to high frequency) to obtain their sympathovagal balance, a validated quantification of real-time stress levels.