Ditch Stress

It’s 2 AM and you’re replaying that awkward thing you said six hours ago for the hundredth time, each replay somehow worse than the last.

Here’s the thing—that awkward moment is over. It happened once. But in your mind, you’ve now experienced it a hundred times, each version more catastrophic than the last. The event itself didn’t make you miserable. Your interpretation and the endless replay did.

So why does this matter beyond just feeling bad? Because your thoughts don’t just stay in your head—they have real physical consequences.

Often we think of mind and body being separate things. You think with your mind, and experience the world with your body. But in reality, they are totally interconnected, and this is where stressing and negative thoughts start to have some very serious effects.

Literally, just by thought alone, you can turn on the stress response. Once the threatening thought is in your consciousness, your brain starts pumping out stress hormones: cortisol and adrenaline.

This response is brilliant when you’re facing actual danger. But when the ‘threat’ is a memory or worry? Your body can’t tell the difference—it floods you with stress hormones either way.

Recent research suggests we have around 6,000 thoughts per day, with many of those being repetitive. And when we’re stressed or anxious, a significant portion of those thoughts tend to skew negative. Woof!

Those are some staggering numbers, so what can we do?

We need to remember that stress is not an event that “happens to us”. Our beliefs and perceptions of events are more important than the actual events in determining our level of stress. Or as Shakespeare so aptly put it: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

For instance: you are talking to someone about something very important to you. They look at their watch. They look at their watch again. They pull out their phone. They start typing on the phone. How might you interpret that?

Well you might think they are rude, not listening, don’t care. But really, what are the facts? You are talking to someone, and they looked away. Everything else is our interpretation. Maybe they knew they were getting an important call? Felt anxious about an upcoming meeting?

And here’s where the real work begins: Awareness is key. This is your first step in changing negative thoughts. You cannot counter thoughts you don’t realize you’re thinking. Perception is everything.

One tool you can use here is creating a bubble. Think of it as creating a mental anchor point—a moment where you ground yourself and actually listen to what’s running through your mind. Create one right when you wake up and another right before you fall asleep—these are your bookends, your insulation between you and the day. You can even add a third one midday, at the office or gym. No one can see inside your mind.

And in that bubble, start to listen. What’s going on for you? What’s the predominant negative thought trying to get your attention? If it helps, you can start to categorize those thoughts:

Are your negative thoughts about yourself? Other people? What comes next? Or maybe just the whirlwind of the world right now? Putting your thoughts in buckets can help you to see where the worst of your negative thoughts are coming from.

Once you’ve got your bubble, and you can see where the negativity is really weighing on you, you can decide where to start. Maybe you notice that many of your negative thoughts are about yourself: how you look, your life as it is now, what you are or are not accomplishing.

Or maybe you want to pick a thought from each category? Whatever feels right.

Now we counter that thought. Affirmations are great, but they are so much more potent if they come from lived experience. Instead of forcing yourself to say ‘I am confident,’ recall a specific moment when you felt genuinely confident—nailing that presentation, helping a friend through a crisis, whatever it was. That memory is proof your brain can’t argue with.

Now will this work the first time? Maybe, but probably not. This is a practice, and it takes repetition to get good at anything. But if you can stay in awareness, and keep countering that thought, you can change it! Repetition literally rewires your brain.

Your homework for today: Set two alarms. One for tomorrow morning, one for tomorrow night. When they go off, that’s your bubble time. Two minutes to listen. One negative thought to counter. That’s it.

Because changing your brain doesn’t happen in a single dramatic moment—it happens in thousands of small ones, repeated until they become automatic. Start with two.