In this solo episode of the No Days Off podcast, host Brian Gubernick shares his personal experience of heightened stress as a high‑achieving individual and outlines a practical, self‑help framework for managing stress. He emphasizes the importance of a positive attitude, deliberately avoiding stressful people and situations, increasing the frequency of saying “no” and cancelling non‑essential commitments, distinguishing between what can and cannot be controlled, re‑assessing perceived urgency and importance, prioritising sufficient sleep, paying attention to nutrition, and disconnecting from phones, TV and news. Throughout, he frames these strategies as tools listeners can adopt selectively to bring stress levels down and maintain better mood, performance, and overall health.
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Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Today I want to talk about health, and specifically I want to talk about stress, stress management. Here's the scoop: if you are on this journey of getting better every single day. And you wouldn't be listening to this podcast and be part of the No Days Off Nation if in fact you didn't aspire to get better every single day. If you're on this journey, there is no question that you will have periods, moments of stress. You have a string of days, maybe even a string of weeks, potentially even months of higher stress. Why? Because 'Cause you're a high achiever because you push, you strive for bigger and better things. And sometimes you get caught up and you look up and you suddenly realize, man, I am more stressed, more strained, more anxiety than I've had in a while. We all go through these periods of time, no matter how hard we work on our health, our focus or our time management, it's gonna creep. It's gonna come up. And I'm talking about this topic today because recently for me, I've noticed that my stress levels have increased. I've noticed that my behavior has changed a little bit. I recognize that in some of my relationships, I'm a little shorter in conversations I'm having. I'm a little bit quicker to emotion. I'm feeling a little groggier. A little crankier. And, you know, being at this for a little while, these are signs of me being a little too overstressed. And I say overstressed because I think there's an advantage to having a bit of stress as well, right? So I think, and maybe some of you disagree with this, but I do think that there's benefit in getting things done and accomplishing things to have a bit of stress on you. But when you run in the red for too long, you start to show up differently. And, and I feel like maybe, just maybe, I've been doing that as of late. So I had to take a step back and I had to go back to my old notes where I've got, you know, in, in my notebook, you know, a model or things I need to do or think around when stress feels a little bit higher than it should be. In no exact order, I want to share the things that are on my mind, what I'm doing, and maybe, maybe they help you out too if you're in a moment of stress or when you are in a moment of stress. The first thing is, I think about what Mac Newton, friend of our podcast, always says, attitude is everything. Attitude is everything. And it shows up here as well. Positive attitude for me, making sure that my mind is right, regardless of stress or whatever it may be, being optimistic, you know, maintaining a positive mindset. My attitude is everything. So sometimes it's a, almost, even if I don't feel great, if I drive or strive, I should say, to have a positive attitude, almost fake it till I make it in a strange sort of way. Like I'm going to convince myself I'm happy. I'm going to convince myself I'm excited. I'm going to convince myself I'm positive. Well, I become that person. So in terms of managing stress, I got to check my attitude. Next thing I got to do, I have to be especially, especially sensitive to stressful people and situations. In other words, I've got to avoid stressful people and situations. Now I want to do that all the time, but when I already feel like I'm under high stress, I got to get away. I got to create a distance between environments, situations, and people that I deem to be stressful. Because my experience with this is when I feel that way and I'm around an environment that's like that as well, it increases my stress, my stress levels. So I have to be purposeful in avoiding stressful people, situations, environments. In doing so, you know, along those same lines, the next thing I got to do for me personally, I increase the frequency of saying no. I start saying no a lot more to what, what would typically show up on my calendar. Maybe things I'm a little bit more lenient around. I've got to have more space. I've got to create more time. And the best way for me to do that is to make certain that there are no marginal, non-important items on my calendar in my personal and in my business life. I'll go so far as to start having cancellation parties where I'll look at my calendar and I will ask myself, what can I cancel? Because it's not, important at this moment, or maybe not important at all. In doing so, I create more space, a little bit more downtime, and a way for me to start relieving a bit of stress. Next thing I like to do, I like to make a list. I will literally make a list. I'll ask myself, what can I control and what can I not control? I want to bring awareness to the things that I can control because I like to focus on what it is I can control. But equally, if not more important, I want to recognize what can't I control, what's outside of my control. I've got to accept that there are events that I simply cannot control. And making this list brings awareness. And when I recognize, you know what, I could stress about that, I could, I could get really, you know, tied up in that. But the reality is, if I can't influence the outcome, if I cannot control it in some way, it's a waste of time, energy, and mental space. So I'll make a list of what I can control and cannot control, and I'll focus on those things that I can control. And say no to what I cannot. On that same note though, on this model, I'll also take a step back and remind myself that, that things are not nearly as urgent or as important as I may, I may believe them to be. And why do I say that? How do I know that? Well, history tells me so. Every one of us assigns urgency and importance to things that days or weeks or months later, we look back on and say, man, that wasn't that important, or that wasn't all that urgent. Now, not everything falls into that category. I think my point here is my experience tells me that when I place heavier weight on things, create more urgency or importance around them, it doesn't usually shake out in that way. In other words, it's not as urgent or as important. It doesn't weigh as much. As I believe it does in the moment. History tells me this. The last two things I'm going to look to do when I'm managing my stress, I got to sleep. You know, it's, it's funny. Like, I'm not sure what happens first. I start— I stop sleeping the amount I need and therefore I become stressed, or I become stressed and I stopped sleeping the amount I need. Whatever the case, go to bed. More sleep makes me feel better. And more sleep, I'm going to guess, makes you feel better. Going back to attitude being everything, having a positive mindset, my mood, all of these things are all driven by the amount of sleep that I get. Let's be honest, man, 5 or 6 hours of sleep is not enough. I don't know if you need 9 or 10, but there's a difference between me at 7.5 hours and me at 5.5. Me at 7.5, even in stressful scenarios, behaves a lot differently than me at 5.5. Along the go to sleep, I also think about checking your food. I'm not— this is not a food episode, but, but your food matters. Time of day you're eating, what you're consuming, how healthy it is. These things all impact mood and stress. And the very last thing when it comes to stress management for me, I got to turn off my phone. I got to turn off TV. And I especially got to turn off news. Now I'm not saying disconnect from all things, though that is nice, but these things that create stress, you know, like headlines that may catch my attention or drive emotion or shows that are kind of fruitless, kind of pointless, maybe entertaining, but a waste of time. You know, for me, I start going in my own head and say I'm wasting time and I'm just creating more stress. I just got to eliminate that stuff. And if I want to bring it back, you know, I do, but once my stress levels are back under control. So I'm talking about managing stress because again, I'm kind of in a moment where I feel a little bit more stressed. And if I go do these, these 7 or 8 things I described, I'll get things back under control. I'll feel a lot better. All of these are important. Some of them are more important on certain days. My hope is that you can look at this list and maybe one or two or three of these things, or maybe all of them actually helps you today. If in fact you're under stress and if it's not today, when it comes about, I want you to come back to this episode. I want you to listen to it and I bet you're violating some of these things. And if you just put them into practice, your stress levels may decrease as well. That's all I have for you today. The No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.
