A practical exercise for stress: write down the thing stressing you most, then list 15 things you don’t know about it—things you have no idea about. Then write a “how” or “what” question for each one.
For a relationship fight, you might not know: what’s the experience like for her? What’s the neurological causation of fights? What am I actually scared of happening? What am I fighting for exactly? What does my ego have to do with this fight?
After completing the exercise, notice three things: what happened to your stress level, what action items appeared that you didn’t have before, and what questions you can now ask of other people. The shift from “I’m stressed about X” to “here are 15 things I don’t understand about X” moves the brain from fear-driven problem-solving into wonder-driven exploration—which paradoxically produces better solutions.
“Notice the action items that you didn’t have before that you have now. Notice what questions you can ask of different people to allow you to solve this problem.”