Today is National Stress Awareness Day. What? Just a day? I feel like we could dedicate at least a week/ month/ year to it. Stress is so pervasive that 8 in 10 Americans are plagued by it. Another 41% of us say we don’t have the time to do the things we want to do.

I can’t say that I am one of the 2 people in 10 who doesn’t get stressed, but I can say that I have figured out one way to flip the script on stress. I used to think that stress happened to me, at me and that I couldn’t help but feel stressed. Now I can (mostly) control my response to the mayhem that is everyday life.

Because you know that crazy is going to happen. Your refrigerator will go on the fritz, your water heater will burst & flood, your toddler will come home from daycare with some ungodly rash that you’ve never seen before (or your “adult” child will be a little less adult than you hoped) and your mother will do that thing that she does that just gets on your last nerve. But I did figure out a way to give myself space and time to step back from the stressful triggers and respond in a way that didn’t add to the mayhem.