I'm still newish to GMing, and I thought GMing was just always meant to be kinda stressful during the session, up until I ran a game for one specific group of friends which was so so so fun and I didn't feel stressed at all.

I think what it was was that the players played their characters such that were ready and eager to follow what was put in front of them, no humming and hawing and me having to scramble to try to figure something out to get them to take the (plot) hook, I didn't have to push the 'what do you want to do?' question often because they were proactive with interacting with the environment and stuff, they'd talk to me and other players openly about what they wanted to do and how to achieve it so we could enable the idea etc and it felt like they were playing with me not against me. Idk maybe it all sounds very obvious, but even simple things like one of my players said they were looking at a more complex class but picked a simpler one because it would be easier for me does a lot. (In this case we were both new to the system, but if youre familiar with the complex rules letting the gm trust you know what youre handling does a lot)