Raise your hand if you’ve ever felt personally attacked by stress. Mine’s up. Yours is probably already glued to your forehead in a stress-induced facepalm. But what if I told you stress isn’t evil—it’s just got horrible people skills?
Welcome to another chaotic-but-potentially-transformative episode of life. I’m Brian Walsh, an insanely distracted, and yet productive, member of society. I have a full time job as a parent, IT Director, podcaster, author/content creator and your guide through the tangled forest of habit-building and mental resilience. This week, I want to reintroduce you to a character you think you know: Stress.
Stress gets a bad rap, but at its core, it’s just your body’s way of yelling, “Hey, something’s up!”—like a toddler in a grocery store screaming for a lollipop, but slightly more cortisol-y. Back in caveman days, it saved lives (think: sabertooth cat = RUN!). Now it shows up when your Wi-Fi drops during a Zoom call.
In this post, we’ll go over three practical tools to turn stress into something you work with instead of something you rage cry over.
Tool #1: The 5-4-3-2-1 Grounding Hack
It’s like a sensory scavenger hunt. Name 5 things you see, 4 you feel, 3 you hear, 2 you smell, and 1 you taste. You’ll snap back into the moment faster than your brain can finish that “what-if” spiral.
Tool #2: Stress Rescripting
Be the director of your own inner drama. Instead of “I’m freaking out,” try “My body’s giving me energy to handle this.” It’s like switching out the horror soundtrack for a superhero anthem.
Tool #3: Environment Design
Notifications? Off. Doom piles? Banished. Use the “Don’t put it down” rule and stop letting clutter bully your brain into submission. Less chaos around you = less chaos inside you.
The truth? Stress is a habit. And like any habit, you can hack it.
Want more tools? Chapter 5 of Habit Craft 101 goes deeper—including one bonus technique affectionately named “The Starfish.” Spoiler alert: it’s not a yoga pose.
So here’s your challenge this week: try one rescripting phrase. Send me your results. I may just feature you in an upcoming episode of the Bad Day Excellence podcast. Let’s turn your bad day into a breakthrough—together.