We all experience stress. It’s natural and nothing to be ashamed of. But stress has a funny way of hijacking your actions when it has no business doing so.

When we’re stressed, we react more than we act. And those reactions very rarely serve to make us less stressed; often, they worsen the problem. A common example is “letting the stress do the talking” when we’re in a professional environment.

Take some time now to recall times when you were stressed. What were your emotional and physical signs? How could you tell you were stressed? Perhaps your heart rate increases or you get a headache. Maybe you get snappy and defensive. Whatever happens, write it down. Make a little warning note for yourself.

Next, keep that note handy. Pin it to your wall or save it on your desktop. When you feel those signs, let that be a reminder that you should create some emotional distance. That means just step back a little, maybe for no more than thirty seconds. Just enough time to remind yourself that you are not your stress, and you want to take positive steps. (Personally, I write a little haiku about the current situation – always centers me.)

Now, in that space, ask yourself: “What is the outcome I desire?” Be clear about it. The outcome is very rarely “I want everyone to know how frustrated I am.” So your goal isn’t to express stress, it’s to diminish it.

(By the way, if you need to vent – awesome! Go vent! But venting happens in a different space. Vent to a friend, a loved one, your journal. Not to the source of your stress!)

Now, as you begin to act, stay deliberate. For each action, each sentence you want to say or write in an email, ask yourself: “Does this bring me closer to my goal? Or is it just the stress talking?”

Saying to one of your employees, “I can’t believe your work was this bad! I shouldn’t have to even explain this,” feels good in the moment, because that’s the stress substituting its own feelings for yours. But if your goal is a productive long-term employee and corrected work, did those words get you closer to that goal? Absolutely not. In fact, those words are very likely to lead to more stressful situations for you in the near future!

Identify your stress. Build your warning signs and take emotional distance. Put the stress in its proper place, and act as your true self. Silence the stress, and it won’t propagate.

Not every story has to have a dash of magic in it. Just the ones worth telling.

If you can’t inspire an action or entice a smile, why open your mouth? You might do either by simply listening, instead. Hold your tongue until it has magic on it.

To reflect well, you need to do more than just step away and ruminate. You need to actively participate in the downtime, as counter-intuitive as that seems.

To use reflection to really gain insight, ask yourself some pointed questions: What three things made you curious today? What two things do you want to try tomorrow? What was your biggest surprise today?

Give yourself some structure, and make your thoughtfulness meaningful.

Mirrors hurt the most. So if you think a general statement hurts, you perceive it as a mirror. That says more about you than about whoever made the statement.

People will obey the rules you give them. But you don’t always give them the rules you mean to.

If you give someone a rule that states, “I always want to hear your opinion,” but then every time they voice it you shut them down and berate them, really you’ve given them the rule “I want you to lie to me and tell me that your opinion matches mine.” And they’ll obey that rule.

In other words, the rules are set by what you do, not what you say. And if you give too many contradictory rules, remember that people will always obey the rule: “If you can’t win, don’t play.”

My oldest daughter is 13 today.

I have now been a father for thirteen years. They have been the best thirteen years of my life.

The highest compliment a parent can pay to their oldest child is younger siblings. Based on the model of all of my kids (not just the oldest), I’d have had ten more had other circumstances not limited me to three. But these three have been the finest blessings I could have ever asked for. I did not deserve her when my oldest first arrived, and I still don’t – but every day my motivation is to keep up.

My Bean became a Beansprout, and then my Beansprout became a Beanstalk. She’s as incredible a person as I’ve ever known, and I’m honored that I get to keep on knowing her. This is the stage of parenting where you aim to provide a safety net and otherwise get out of the way – she has plenty of adventures to go on. Some will be with me, of course – and I’m glad she wants to. But there’s a whole wide world out there that she’s already claiming as her own, and she will grow far faster and taller than my garden can ever hold.

I love you, my Beanstalk. I’m proud of you, and grateful for you, and I will love you every day forever. Keep growing.

Happy New Month!

This month, I am committing to more acceptance. I am a perennial “boat-rocker,” and I often shift uncomfortably when things could be better. But the juice isn’t always worth the squeeze, and accepting more things as they are gives me more energy to put toward the things that matter. I will spend more time looking around and making sure that’s what I’m doing.

May your waters be calm, my friends.

Let’s say you’re planning to work on your roof next Spring. You call a supply company for roofing tiles and tell them you need some. They ask you when, and you demand to have them nine months before you plan to begin working.

Then, the day before you start, you inspect the tiles and find some things you don’t like about them. You call the company, asking them to fix the error and send you more tiles by tomorrow, because that’s when you’re starting, and you ordered these tiles nine months in advance just to avoid this problem.

Do you see the problem here?

You can ask for things whenever you want, assuming you and the other person can make an agreement. But time is precious, and when you’re asking for it from other people, use it well.

Let’s say you have a budget of $300 for the month. That has to cover all your needs – your food, gas, etc. You’re budgeting very tightly; there are no dollars to spare. Then you discover a local vendor is selling five-dollar bills for $4 each. Given your tight budget, how many should you buy?

The answer is all of them! Obviously! Buy 75 immediately, and then use all that money to buy even more, and repeat until the vendor either stops selling them to you or raises the price above five dollars.

It’s insane that I would even have to say that, but there are plenty of people who don’t seem to grasp the concept. Some expenditures of money (or time, or juice of any kind) give you more back than you spent. There are almost always diminishing marginal returns, but until you hit that point, you should absolutely buy those things.

If you’re a fisherman and you catch fish by hand to sell them, then buying a net is obviously a smart call. Buying ten almost certainly isn’t, because you probably can’t use ten. That’s the diminishing marginal return. But if you don’t buy even one because you “can’t afford it,” then you’re a really terrible business planner.

It’s like saying you don’t have time to assemble your bicycle, because you have to start walking across the country and it’s going to take you weeks if not months. The amount of time you spend assembling the bike will clearly pay itself back many times over!

Don’t be one of those people. If there’s a five-dollar bill for sale for four dollars, buy as many as you can.

You wouldn’t put a blacksmith in charge of an army, even though he knows a lot about weapons. You wouldn’t put an accountant in charge of a sales team, even though she knows a lot about revenue. You wouldn’t put a baker in charge of a restaurant supply chain, even though they know a lot about food.

Subject matter expertise isn’t the same as scope, philosophy, and people management. It’s great to have both, but in a pinch, skip the subject matter expertise. Smart people can learn and rely on experts, but it can be nearly impossible to make a general out of a blacksmith.