I’ve spent thirty five years telling people that moving ranks near the top of life’s most stressful events, right up there with losing a spouse. I’ve said it in coaching sessions, in workshops, probably over coffee with half of you reading this.

Then I moved.

Somewhere between the packing boxes and “where did we even put that” and the nights I couldn’t quite settle into sleep, it hit me. I was living the exact thing I’d been lecturing on for decades. Not managing it from the outside. Living it.

What I noticed

Nothing dramatic. No breakdown, no crisis. Just a low hum underneath everything. A little more tired than the schedule accounted for. A shorter fuse than usual. A stomach that wasn’t quite right. Sleep that came late and left early.

Fatigue, anxiety, poor sleep, muscle tension, digestive upset. That’s the list researchers give for how stress shows up in the body. I’ve quoted it to other people more times than I can count. I hadn’t expected to be describing myself.

Here’s the uncomfortable part. I’ve never thought of myself as a stressed person. Steady, maybe. Resilient, I’d have said. It’s part of how I see myself, the guy who helps other leaders through their storms. So when I recognised these symptoms in my own body, my first reaction wasn’t relief at catching them. It was mild disbelief. Surely not me.

Barry warned me

Years ago, Barry Hawes, one of my early mentors, sat me down and told me plainly that stress takes a toll on leaders that most of us never see coming. He’d watched it happen to good men and women, capable people who thought they were the exception.

I was young. I nodded, said something appreciative, and privately filed it away as advice for other people. Not me. I had energy to burn and a career to build. Ha.

Barry was right, and it took decades and a house move for me to actually hear him. That’s often how it works with the wisest things our mentors tell us. We understand the words long before we understand what they cost.

I still don’t know if what I felt during the move is aging catching up with me, or if I was simply never as immune to stress as I told myself I was. Maybe both. I’m not settled on the answer, and I’m not sure I need to be.

A question worth more than an answer

I could wrap this up with five tips for managing a move. I’m not going to. Partly because you don’t need another checklist. Mostly because I think the more useful thing right now is the question underneath the story.

Where is stress currently travelling with you, and would you recognise it if it were?

Not “are you stressed,” which most of us answer with a reflexive no, the same way I would have a few months ago. The sharper question is whether you’d know your own signs if they showed up. Mine came in through my sleep and my stomach before they ever reached my conscious mind. Yours may knock on a different door entirely.

Scripture doesn’t promise us a stress-free life. It promises something better, a presence in the middle of it. “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7) isn’t a productivity tip. It’s an invitation to stop pretending we’re managing fine when we’re not, and hand the weight to Someone who can actually carry it.

Sit with this before you move on

I’m not going to tell you how I’m handling it, because honestly, I’m still figuring that out. What I’d rather leave you with is this: the people who think they’re too experienced, too steady, or too far along to be caught by stress are often the last ones to notice when it’s already caught them.

I was one of them. Barry told me so, thirty years too early for me to believe him.

So before you close this and move on to the next thing, what would your body tell you right now, if you actually asked it?

I’d love to hear what you notice.