What if your stress isn’t just affecting your mood—but quietly shortening your life and weakening your decisions? In this episode, Santosh Kumar reveals how managing your heart rate and releasing stress can unlock clearer thinking, better leadership, and a longer life.

In this episode, Dean Newlund and Santosh Kumar discuss:

• The concept of a lifetime “heart rate budget” and how it affects longevity
• The difference between physical stress and emotional stress
• How calmness directly impacts decision-making and leadership effectiveness
• The role of wearable technology in tracking stress and improving self-awareness
• Practical ways to release stress and prevent long-term health and performance decline

Key Takeaways:

• Leaders can improve both longevity and performance by managing how they “spend” their heart rate budget and investing in habits like exercise.
• Unreleased emotional stress is more harmful than physical exertion because the body generates energy that isn’t used.
• Calmness improves decision-making, while stress narrows thinking and drives short-term, reactive choices.
• Simple actions like movement or breathing can release stress in real time and restore clarity.
• Wearable tools can build awareness of stress patterns today, while team-level stress visibility is feasible but not yet released.

“You don’t get to control what is your budget, but you get to control how you spend that budget.” — Santosh Kumar

About Santosh Kumar:

Santosh Kumar is the Lillian & Morrie Moss Chair of Excellence Professor in Computer Science at the University of Memphis and CEO & Cofounder of CuesHub. He is also Director of NIH-funded national research centers in Wearable AI called the mDOT Center and the MD2K Center of Excellence. He has been recognized as America’s Ten Most Brilliant Scientists by Popular Science magazine, has been invited to give a talk on the Future of Biosensors at the White House, and has received the Distinguished Alumni Award from The Ohio State University.

Connect with Santosh Kumar:  

Website: https://cueshub.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/santoshkumar4/

See Dean’s TedTalk “Why Business Needs Intuition” here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEq9IYvgV7I

Connect with Dean:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgqRK8GC8jBIFYPmECUCMkw

Website: https://www.mfileadership.com/

The Mission Statement E-Newsletter: https://www.mfileadership.com/blog/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deannewlund/

X (Twitter): https://twitter.com/deannewlund

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MissionFacilitators/

Email: dean.newlund@mfileadership.com

Phone: 1-800-926-7370

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