I know this feeling well. The hyper-vigilant Sunday night dread that meds and sleep can't fix, if you even get much sleep at all. The tightness before Monday's meeting. The exhaustion that isn't about how many hours you work.
Most of us ignore it. We call it stress or just part of the job. We pour another coffee and keep going.
But our bodies never lie. It notices what our minds try to ignore.
This isn't burnout. It's not just a phase, and a vacation won't fix it.
It's a sign that the strategy that helped us succeed isn't working anymore. The identity that got us here now keeps us stuck. Our bodies noticed this months ago and tried to tell us, but we didn't pay attention.
Stephen Porges, at the University of Illinois, calls it neuroception: the nervous system's constant, subconscious scanning for threat. It doesn't care about our strategy decks. It doesn't read our OKRs. It only cares about one thing: Does the environment match who we actually are?
When perception lags reality, our effort becomes a substitute for alignment.
We work harder. Grip the club tighter. Explain more clearly. And the gap keeps widening, because the problem was never clarity. It was congruence. Alignment.
Nobody talks about this in leadership development: the nervous system decides we're unsafe before language has a chance to intervene. That's not a weakness. That's 300 million years of evolution trying to get our attention.
A Stanford study tracked cortisol levels in executives over 18 months. The ones who reported "feeling off" despite strong performance had elevated cortisol an average of four months before any measurable decline in their results. Our bodies know; the data only confirms what we're already experiencing.
So what do we do when things feel off?
We compensate. We get more precise. More decisive. More involved. We close the gaps by adding more meetings. Tighten standards. Explain things again, slower this time, with more detail.
From the outside, this looks like leadership.
From the inside, it's often fear dressed up as responsibility.
I did this for years. Managing perception instead of reality. Optimizing for metrics that no longer measure what matters. Solving the wrong problems like a whirling dervish, my hair on fire.
Our bodies keep score. This isn't just a metaphor. Heart rate variability drops and our cortisol levels stay high. Our systems run hot even when we're sitting still. We burn through energy we don't have, clinging to a strategy that stopped working months ago.
What created our success becomes the filters that blind us to what's next. The more expertise we accumulate, the less we question our own assumptions. The more successful the career, the more invisible the cage.
Eventually, something forces the pause. A miss. A conversation that lands wrong. A health scare. A resignation you didn't see coming. A quiet voice that won't stop asking: Is this it?
By then, recalibration is reactive instead of proactive. You're not expanding. You're recovering.
The fork is always the same question: Will you slow down before the system forces you to stop?
Most won't. The familiar momentum feels safer than the unknown stillness. The identity you've built feels more real than the self underneath it.
But some do. And what happens next is instructive.
They don't find new answers. They stop overriding the ones their body has been giving them. The tension in their shoulders becomes a guide instead of something to ignore. Stories running through their mind get noticed. The intuition they dismissed because the calendar said there wasn't enough time? They finally pay attention.
This is where gut instinct enters. Not the mystical kind, but the neurological kind.
Your gut is not guessing. It is running a pattern match against every similar situation you have ever encountered, tagging each with emotions long before the conscious mind gets involved. It is a rapid calculation that logic alone would take hours to complete.
That certainty or unease is a tell.
Trusting this doesn't mean dismissing the data. It means realizing that your body is data; thousands of hints collected beneath conscious awareness, now begging to be heard.
Here's what actually happens when leaders finally listen: they stop confusing the role with the self. Titles, responsibilities, and expectations are functions, not identity. The body has been trying to teach us the difference. It knows the performance is costing more than it used to. It knows the room responds differently, and we're the variable that changed.
The leaders who recalibrate don't disappear. They become quieter and sharper. Better listeners. They stop pretending to have all the answers. They stop projecting certainty they don't feel. They let questions hang longer before responding. They wait before answering, sitting calmly in the uncertainty. That patience shifts the whole room.
Presence creates space. When I've "acted as if", I filled the room with overwhelming energy and effort (this is real feedback). But when I'm able to be truly present, I leave space for others.
That feeling, the one that something is off even when everything looks fine, that's not a problem to solve.
That's the signal that we've outgrown the container.
The real work begins before things break, when everything seems to work but something still feels off. Our bodies sense the truth in tension and sleepless nights, long before our minds admit it.
The question is whether we'll listen before listening becomes mandatory.
BTW, sometimes the signal is just stress. But you'll know the difference. Stress wants a vacation. This wants something else entirely.