Finding Your Purpose for Endless Energy

Burnout is not a personal failing. In logistics, it is an industry condition. The numbers make that clear: 76% of people in the logistics industry report symptoms of burnout, the highest rate of any industry in the world. Women in senior roles report 60% more stress than their male counterparts. New leaders report burnout at a rate one and a half times higher than the average employee.

"We don't need another slide telling us that stress is bad," said Lupita McGregor Almuhana, founder of Stressie and wellness partner for Women in Breakbulk. "I want to tell you today how to start with something accessible, something that is personal, something that is you."

Her framework moves in an arc: from the body, to the team, to shared purpose. And it starts with breath.

A study comparing breathwork to mindfulness meditation found that participants who learned to regulate their nervous system through breath outperformed the meditation group on cognitive function, decision-making and task performance. The time investment was identical: five minutes each. The difference was that breathwork gives the nervous system a direct, physiological shortcut back to baseline.

The specific tool Lupita teaches is called the physiological sigh. Two sharp inhales through the nose followed by a long, slow exhale. Shallow, stressed breathing causes carbon dioxide to build up in the lungs, signaling danger to the body. The double inhale fully reinflates the lungs and the long exhale releases the buildup, directly activating the vagus nerve and resetting the nervous system in under 30 seconds.

"When you're stressed, your body is telling itself there's something wrong, that it has to fight or run away," she said. "Can you imaging being in front of your team or leading a project under that?"

The reason this matters beyond the individual is that stress is contagious. A Danish study of thousands of workers found that when a manager was stressed, the team was stressed. The reverse was also true: regulated leaders produced regulated teams. Regulated teams show a 4% increase in productivity. Teams connected to shared purpose show 8% lower turnover. Combined, that is a 10% lift in engagement, and compounded across a company, the numbers become significant.

Lupita found her own purpose while working in logistics at Fracht Group, where the stress of unpredictable supply chains had left her disconnected from the work. She reframed it by finding a parallel she already understood: travel. A shipment moves through a port the way a traveler moves through an airport, complete with documents, delays and modes of transport. That insight became a marketing campaign called The Life of a Shipment and renewed her sense of why the work mattered.

"You don't have to love what you do if you pour love into what you do," she said.

Purpose scales the same way stress does. It starts with one person, extends to a team and from there to a project and a company. But it only travels if the person leading has first found their own why. One participant works in crew management for offshore wind and oil and gas projects. She came, she said, because her team had no tools for coming back to baseline under pressure. Taking something back to them was her why for being in the room.

Research tracking 7,000 people over six months found that those without a sense of purpose were twice as likely to die during the study period. Purpose is not a motivational concept. It is a physiological one. People connected to a why move differently, make decisions differently and absorb stress differently.

The good news is that none of this is fixed. The nervous system responds to practice the same way a muscle responds to training. The more you regulate, the faster you get back to baseline. And the faster you get back to baseline, the more of yourself you have left for the work and the people who depend on you.

About This Series

This article was developed from a workshop hosted by the Women in Breakbulk Lounge during Breakbulk Europe.

Title: Active Workshop: Experience the Science of Meaningful Impact on Teams Date: Wednesday, June 17, 2026 Location: Women in Breakbulk Lounge, Breakbulk Europe, Rotterdam Ahoy Speaker: Lupita McGregor Almuhana, Founder, Stressie; Wellness Partner, Women in Breakbulk Session URL: https://europe.breakbulk.com/agendas/event-agenda/active-workshop-experience-the-science-of-mea

Become a member of the Women in Breakbulk network and get all the news and event updates about women in our industry.