The Hidden Foundations of Everyday Wellbeing
Samantha Newton FCIPD is the founder of Magenta HR Consulting. She supports leaders in professional services to handle people pressure with calm judgement and fair, defensible decisions, because work should support wellbeing, not quietly erode it.
Most people don't realise how much work is affecting their wellbeing until they stop.
Not because they're careless. Because work becomes the water you swim in. You adjust. You normalise. You tell yourself it's just a busy patch, until you take a day off and notice your shoulders drop for the first time in weeks. Or you sleep for ten hours and still wake up tired. Or you realise you've been running on adrenaline and calling it "drive".
Work-related strain rarely arrives with a dramatic moment. It shows up quietly: Sunday night tension, shallow sleep, a racing mind at bedtime, or the sense that even time off doesn't quite restore you.
You might not hate your job. You might even enjoy parts of it. But something about it lingers in your body long after the working day ends.
Work is not a neutral backdrop.
We often talk about wellbeing in terms of what happens outside work, nutrition, movement, mindfulness, rest. Those things matter.
But one of the biggest influences on how we feel day in and day out is how our working life interacts with our energy, nervous system, and sense of control.
Photo by Cookie the Pom on Unsplash
Work shapes how we sleep, how we think, how patient we are with other people, and how much emotional capacity we have left at the end of the day. When work is supportive and aligned, it can provide purpose and structure. When it isn't, it can quietly erode wellbeing, often so gradually that constant tiredness starts to feel normal.
The stress you "cope with" is still stress
Low-level stress becomes invisible when it's been present for too long.
Many people live with subtle signs of strain: irritability over small things, difficulty switching off, persistent tension, or a feeling of being "on alert". These aren't personal shortcomings. They're signals, often pointing to blurred boundaries, unclear expectations, unresolved pressure, or too little recovery.
And work-related stress doesn't always look dramatic. It can exist in roles that appear stable, senior, even successful. In fact, it often hides inside "good jobs", the ones you feel you should be grateful for.
So you tell yourself:
- "Other people have it worse."
- "I should be able to handle this."
- "It'll calm down after this deadline."
But when "busy" becomes the baseline, your body doesn't treat it as temporary. It treats it as your environment.
A common pattern: "It's fine… I'm just tired"
Here's what I hear often, especially from capable people who take pride in doing things properly:
They're not in crisis. They're functioning. They're delivering. They're reliable.
But they're tired in a way that doesn't lift.
They wake up already braced. They feel behind before the day has started. They're calm in meetings but wired afterwards. They don't feel dramatic, they feel dulled. And because nothing is "wrong enough", they keep going.
That's the trap.
When you live in low-level strain for long enough, it stops feeling like strain. It starts feeling like personality: "I'm just a bit tense." "I'm not great at switching off." "I've always been a light sleeper."
Sometimes that's true. Often, it's your nervous system adapting to an environment that never really lets you land.
Photo by Samantha Gades on Unsplash
Why work affects wellbeing so deeply
Work hits wellbeing because it touches the foundations: time, identity, control, and safety.
- Time: work determines when you rest, eat, move, and recover , and whether recovery is protected or constantly interrupted.
- Control: unclear priorities and shifting demands keep the nervous system activated. It's hard to settle when the goalposts move.
- Identity: when your role becomes your worth, boundaries feel like failure. Saying "no" feels like being difficult.
- Safety: psychological safety is the difference between feeling steady at work and feeling braced for impact, not because anyone is shouting, but because you don't know what will land next.
Wellbeing at work isn't just about workload. It's about autonomy, fairness, and whether effort is recognised. It's about whether expectations are clear, whether boundaries are respected, and whether you can do good work without being pulled in five directions.
Even small misalignments, constant interruptions, conflicting priorities, lack of feedback, vague decision-making, can accumulate into chronic stress over time.
A short vignette (not unusual, just rarely named)
Someone I worked with described their week like this:
They didn't have an impossible workload. They had an impossible shape to the work.
Every day began with one set of priorities and ended with another. Messages arrived late in the evening "just to flag" something for the morning. Meetings were booked over focus time. Decisions were delayed, then suddenly urgent. When they asked for clarity, they were told to "use their judgement", but when they did, they were questioned afterwards.
Photo by Camylla Battani on Unsplash
Nothing about it looked dramatic from the outside.
But inside, their system never stood down. They were permanently half-ready for the next demand.
That's what drains people: not just volume, but unpredictability, blurred boundaries, and the feeling of being responsible without being supported.
Awareness is the beginning (not judgement)
A helpful place to begin is awareness, not self-criticism.
Pause and reflect:
- How do I usually feel at the end of a working day, relieved, wired, flat, tense?
- Do I feel respected and clear about what's expected of me?
- Where do my boundaries feel stretched, blurred, or ignored?
- What am I tolerating because it's easier than naming it?
- If I'm honest, what would "steady" feel like, and when did I last feel it?
Sometimes the answer isn't "I need a new job." Sometimes it's "I need a different way of working." Sometimes it's "I need a conversation I've been avoiding." And sometimes it is simply: "This isn't sustainable."
Small shifts that change the whole feel of a week
Improving wellbeing doesn't always require dramatic change. Often, it starts with small, intentional shifts that restore clarity and reduce friction.
That might mean being clearer about priorities, creating a real end to the working day, reducing emotional labour that isn't yours to carry, or redefining what "good enough" looks like under pressure.
It can also mean noticing the difference between what you can do and what you're being asked to do, and treating that gap as information, not a personal failure.
Because sometimes the most powerful change is simply acknowledging that something isn't working as well as it could, and that your wellbeing is not the price of being competent.
Photo by Jakub Żerdzicki on Unsplash
True wellbeing isn't created only through what we add after work. It's built when our everyday working lives are allowed to support, rather than undermine, our health.
Next week, I'll look at the four dimensions of wellbeing, and why "doing the right things" still doesn't work if one part of the system is quietly carrying the rest.
A question to sit with this week: what is your work asking your body to carry, and is it reasonable?
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Main – Photo by Cookie the Pom on Unsplash
About the Author: Samantha Newton
