Dr. Ryan Martin

There's a bunch we can do in advance of those stimuli.

And there are ways that we can take care of ourselves.

There are ways that we can think about how we engage with the people around us by doing things like staying hydrated that I mentioned, getting a good night's sleep, managing our stress, being aware of the situations we put ourselves in that we actually invite into our lives.

By paying attention to those things and by being really intentional about those things, we can have this healthier emotional life down the road.

So one of the things I always like to do with people is encourage them to what I call diagram an emotional incident.

So I want you to think through when you experience a situation like that.

Let's think about the whole thing really completely.

So for instance, when you get stuck in traffic, there's a couple of different things that are happening, right?

There's the stimulus itself, which is you getting stuck in traffic.

There's also your mood at the time that you got stuck in traffic.

So are you stressed?

Are you hungry?

Are you running late for something?

Are you tired?

And so on.

There's the way you think about that stimulus.

So what it means in your life, uh,

Are you is this going to ruin your day?

Is this going to ruin your career?

Do you think everybody else on the road is an idiot?