The case for giving yourself permission to breathe, according to neuroscience

Three things you can try this week.

[Photo: Léonard Cotte/Unsplash]

Most organizations genuinely want to support their people. We invest in wellness apps, coaching programs, and leadership development, all with good intentions. Yet burnout rates keep climbing. Aflac’s WorkForces Report from November 2024 referenced that burnout affected nearly 3 in 5 American workers with employees experiencing high levels of stress rising to 38% in 2024, up from 33% in 2023. The issue isn’t effort or resources. It may simply be that we’re solving for the wrong problem.

I recently sat down with Natallia Miranchuk, founder of SOULA, an AI-powered emotional support platform that combines neuroscience, health expertise, and artificial intelligence to address workplace wellbeing. While her research has focused primarily on women, the insights she shared have implications for how we support all high performers—regardless of gender.

SOULA recently completed a pilot program with InDrive, a global unicorn with over 2,000 employees. The results were remarkable: 67% sustained engagement among participants—compared to the industry standard of just 3% for wellness apps like Calm or Headspace. Participants returned to the platform four to six times weekly for what Miranchuk calls “self-reflection therapy”—brief, 10-minute sessions that don’t require scheduling a therapist or waiting for a weekly coaching call.

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Here’s what the data revealed—insights that can reshape how any leader thinks about sustaining high performance.

Care before you push.

Many workplace wellness approaches emphasize optimization: go further, achieve more, level up. These aren’t bad instincts—ambition matters. But Miranchuk’s research suggests that sustainable performance starts somewhere different. “When a person feels genuinely cared for,” she told me, “they can do whatever they want.” This isn’t soft thinking—it’s neuroscience. Feeling psychologically safe and supported activates the neural pathways that enable creativity, risk-taking, and resilience. Leaders who model care aren’t coddling their teams; they’re creating the conditions for sustained excellence.

Support works best in the moment.

The InDrive pilot’s most surprising finding wasn’t just the engagement rate—it was when people sought support. They didn’t wait for scheduled therapy sessions or monthly check-ins. They needed emotional processing in real time, multiple times throughout the week. This challenges the conventional model of periodic wellness interventions. Just as we’ve learned that feedback works best when it’s timely, emotional support may be most effective when it’s available on-hand rather than on-schedule. For leaders, this means creating cultures where checking in isn’t a calendar event—it’s woven into daily rhythms.

Personalization matters more than we thought.

Miranchuk’s work highlights how one-size-fits-all wellness programs often miss the mark. Her research with women revealed that biological cycles, hormonal patterns, and stress responses vary significantly—and generic tools don’t account for these differences. But the broader principle applies to everyone: we all have unique rhythms, energy patterns, and recovery needs. Building what Miranchuk calls “soft resilience”—the capacity to sustain performance over time—requires self-awareness about our individual cycles and designing routines that prevent burnout rather than treating it after the fact. The best leaders help their people discover what sustainable performance looks like for them specifically.

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