Men's Guide to Stress Management: The 5 W's Method

I want you to picture a tape robot in your head. You've seen in the movies, those things where you see the arm grabs a little tape and inserts it here, and it grabs a different one and puts it in this one and moves this tape back to where it came from, and they keep switches up with every new task is switches. What is feeding in, right? That's the majority of men's brains. Men's brains work in a very cool way, just like a computer in most situations.

Now I want you to tap into your data driven male brain and take advantage of that to manage your stress more effectively by using this natural ability. Okay. Let me explain. Here's the million dollar question. How do men like us reach our full potential, growing to the men we dream of being, while taking care of our responsibilities, working, Being good husbands, fathers, and still take care of ourselves. Well, that's the big question in this podcast.

We'll help you answer those questions and more. My name is Brent and welcome to the fallible man podcast.

Now I have to say that this is not every single man in existence, because sure enough, someone will call me a liar or an idiot because they don't happen to think that way. That's just reality. You can't talk about every single person because there's always an exception to every rule. However, neuroscience has proven that the majority of men's brains function just like that. The great thing is this gives you a huge advantage in dealing with stress.

By the way, my name is Brent and welcome to the Fallible Man podcast, your home for all things man. Big shout out to our regular listeners, the Fallible Nation, and a warm welcome if this is your first time. Thanks for checking us out. We know there's a lot out there competing for you, Promise I'll make this worth your while. Be sure to connect with me. All social media platforms at the fallible man, particularly active on Instagram. And I'd love to hear what you have to say about the show.

So thanks for checking us out. Let me know. Here is how to use this God given ability of your brain, the way you think to your advantage.

When facing stress, we're going to go old school and go back literally to old school and use the five W's to break down the source and cause of your stress. Because we need the data. So, all of you who went to public school know this. 1. Identify the who. Who, if anyone, is causing you the stress? 2. Identify the what. What is causing the stress and the frustration? 3. Identify the when. Is there a time of day, a time of year, a day of the week, a part of the month?

When is this stress occurring? When is the causality of this? Number four, identify the where is there a physical location. Now I can hear a lot of you saying, yeah, work. I get it. You can't necessarily avoid that, but. Is there a physical location where you are encountering this stress that can be avoided or not? Maybe that's work. Maybe that's home. Hopefully he's not home. Maybe that's with a certain group of people.

Maybe that's when you're committed to something you don't want to do, but identify the location as part of the dataset. Number five is identify the why. This is really important and this is probably the hardest of the five. Why is the stress happening? Is there an outside influence creating this? Are you doing something that has negative repercussions that you haven't accounted for? Is there something leveraging against you to cause this stress?

What, if any, or I should say why, if any, is this happening? Maybe it's something you don't have control over. Maybe it is something you have control over. But once again, it's part of the data set.

Now, once you identify the five W's, right? I know this sounds exceedingly simple, but it's not. Once you identify the five W's, you now have the necessary data to make a plan and to take action to negate the stress, alleviate the stress, or at least handle it more effectively. You see, once you identify the causes, put names to them, put faces to them, write it on a sheet of paper. If that makes it easier, literally make a brain map for it.

Usually the stress is a combination of one to three of these three W's. It's a location. There's causality of why, well, you have to go to work or something. Right. Uh, and there's a, who that jerk boss of yours or that coworker who's just an incessant jerk. Okay. If you identify the data, the specific pieces and name them. Now it's in front of you. It's out of your head. It's in front of you. I'm literally suggesting you write it down. You know, I'm not a big journaler.

If you listen to the show very often, but. Put it down on paper, put it down where you can visually see it, put a name to it, put a description to it, actually break down the data. You're in a position to handle it better. One of the frequent things that happens with stress is we tend to get out of our logical brain. There's an amount of fog that comes with this stress that disrupts our normal process of handling things. Get back into that big, beautiful brain computer of yours.

And attach for a minute and mine the data. Like I said, men are data driven. Our brains are data driven. So if you mind the data, you can actually take it out of your head, put it down on paper and externally review disconnected. Some of you guys. You should check out the story, the story work, uh, episode. I did get it down on paper. You can actually start to manipulate it from an external side. Once you start to look at it externally as data, instead of passionately are emotionally.

Once you start to break down the data set, then you can actually put together a productive plan to negate. Get rid of, or at least traverse the stress in a more effective way, giving you a better life and a better day promise. It will actually make a huge difference.

Now it is Friday and recently Charlie Schmultz left us a beautiful review. He left it on a private server, uh, that him and I are connected on. So I wanted to share with this with you guys, five star review. The foul man podcast is a must listen for anyone out there trying to make it through this thing called life. If you listen with an open mind, you will grow to be a better person for yourself, for your family, and with your life. Tony, thanks so much for that.

And Tony actually is an upcoming guest. You guys will see him a little later in the season. I promise guys. Use that big, beautiful brain of yours, crunch the data. This is one of your natural strengths. Crunch the data, detach yourself from it, put it in front of you. So you can look at it dispassionately and you will absolutely be able to stress your stress, your manager stress much more effectively. I wouldn't share it if I didn't believe it. It's one of the things I do.

I guarantee it works for me and it will work for you. Be better tomorrow because what you do today, I'll see you on the next one. This has been the fellow man podcast. You're home for everything man, husband, and father. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a show. Head over to www. TheFallibleMan. com for more content and get your own Fallible Man gear.