A few years back, life piled on. My son’s school went hybrid. My wife still had to go into work. My team was sprinting at 125 percent like it was a competitive sport. Somewhere between reboots, remote standups, and trying to teach kindergarten math, I hid in the closet and cried. My wife hugged me while the dogs barked like they were coaching from the sidelines. That moment is burned in. I felt helpless and hopeless. And it was only Monday.
Here’s the wild thing I learned in that mess. The weight I felt was not reality. It was a story told by three pounds of mush in my skull. That’s the average weight of the human brain. Three pounds that can convince you you’re carrying a cement backpack up a mountain.
When the fog rolls in, I don’t try to outthink it. I ground myself. Literally. The 5-4-3-2-1 exercise is my emergency brake. Five things I can see. Four I can touch. Three I can hear. Two I can smell. One I can taste. It drags my attention out of the mental doom spiral and back into the room where life is actually happening. It sounds basic because it is. It also works.
Then I kick off what I call the TAP cycle. No fancy acronym needed. I just do the things that lighten the load. Ground. Reflect. Talk. I’ll journal a few lines, call a friend, or be honest with my wife. If I need a pro, I get one. Burying it never helped me. It just leaks out later at the worst possible time.
Next move is the Stoic one. The dichotomy of control. When I asked myself why I was stressed, half the answers were things I couldn’t affect if I tried. Global events. Other people’s choices. The news. The economy. That stuff is weather. I can pick a jacket, not stop the rain. What I can control is embarrassingly small and wonderfully powerful. My attitude. My actions. My calendar. Who I spend time with. What I buy. When I sleep. What I eat. Tiny things, repeated, change the whole trajectory.
To prove it to myself, I look for a tiny win. Yesterday I finally put away all the vacation laundry. Not exactly a movie montage, but it was a small click of order in a loud week. That win reminded me we actually went on a vacation. We have a closet. We had clean clothes. Life isn’t perfect, but it’s not hopeless either. Tiny wins are receipts that progress is real.
Last piece. Don’t do this alone. Set up an accountability buddy with a heavy meter from 1 to 10. If either of you hits 6, you call. You don’t need to fix each other. You just remind the other person that the brain is three pounds, not 300, and that they’ve handled every hard day so far.
If you’re in a tough stretch right now, I see you. Ground yourself. Run your TAP cycle. Control the square foot you can control. Celebrate one tiny win today. And if the darkness won’t budge, please reach out for help. There’s zero shame in it. The goal isn’t to be impressive. The goal is to be okay, then better, then quietly strong. Three pounds at a time.