Every so often, someone reads my CV and gives me a look I now recognize instantly.
It’s that raised-eyebrow, slight head-tilt expression that quietly says, “Wow. This guy must have everything figured out.”
They see the titles.
The operations.
The hospitals overseen.
The budgets managed.
The academic roles.
The leadership programs.
And understandably, they assume my career unfolded like a carefully plotted road trip—neat, logical, predictable.
I always smile when that happens.
Because anyone living anything close to real life—whether you’re running a teaching hospital, managing a team, raising a family, or simply navigating the week-to-week chaos we all face—knows the truth:
Authentic leadership doesn’t live on the CV.
It lives in the messy middle you never write down.
And that is where stress management for leaders becomes essential. Not during strategy retreats. Not in quiet office moments. But in the real moments—when three problems hit at once and you’re trying not to lose your composure in front of the people who count on you.
Let me share the day I learned the most effective stress management technique I’ve ever used—and how a single word from Navy SEAL Commander Jocko Willink changed the way I lead.
A Leadership Stress Moment I Still Remember
Let’s go back to early 2017.
At the time, I was serving as Medical Director of the Veterinary Technology Program—a program a colleague and I had built from the ground up. We had just come through our first AVMA accreditation. I was also running an e-commerce business on nights and weekends.
And then came that Tuesday morning.
It started with a budget meeting about vital equipment we needed but still couldn’t get approved. I left the room already calculating alternative paths.
Halfway down the hallway, a faculty member stopped me with a student issue that needed immediate support.
My phone buzzed—a shipment problem in my side business.
It buzzed again—a compliance requirement that had surfaced early and now needed attention that same day.
All of this happened before 11 a.m.
I felt it rising—the tight chest, the mental acceleration, the familiar inner narrator whispering:
Why is everything happening at once?
Why today?
What else is about to go wrong?
And then came the moment I still remember clearly.
A colleague approached with a simple question about an upcoming accreditation visit. Nothing urgent. Nothing unreasonable. Just a normal part of their job.
And I snapped.
Not dramatically. Not loudly. But with just enough edge that their expression changed—surprise, then hurt—before they stepped back.
That look stayed with me for the rest of the day.
Because I knew immediately what I had done:
They came to me doing their job, and I made them feel like they had done something wrong.
That is the cost of poor stress management for leaders.
You don’t just lose your temper.
You lose trust that took months to build.
I didn’t want to lead that way. Something had to change.
Recognizing a Leadership Pattern I Didn’t Like
I wish I could say that moment was isolated.
It wasn’t.
That edge would surface when I was overwhelmed. Not daily. Not even weekly. But often enough that I could see exactly where this was heading.
If I didn’t learn a better stress management strategy, I’d become the kind of leader people worked around—not the kind of leader people trusted.
And I had seen leaders like that before.
I did not want to become one.
But awareness alone wasn’t enough.
I still needed an actual tool—something I could use in real time to interrupt the stress response before it shaped my behavior.
The Book That Changed My Approach to Stress
Quick note: This post contains affiliate links to books I genuinely recommend. If you purchase through these links, I may earn a small commission at no cost to you. I only link to resources I’ve personally used and found valuable.
A few months later, I picked up Tim Ferriss’s Tools of Titans. It had just come out in December 2016, and I was quietly hunting for better stress management techniques for leaders like me who were drowning in responsibility.
I reached the section on Navy SEAL Commander Jocko Willink.
He shared a stress management practice so simple I nearly dismissed it:
When something goes wrong, say one word to yourself: “Good.”
Plan falls apart? Good. Someone drops the ball? Good. Priorities shift suddenly? Good.
My first thought? “That seems too simple. How is one word supposed to help when I have seventeen things demanding my attention right now?”
But I’d also seen that look on my colleague’s face. And I knew if I didn’t find better stress management for leaders like myself, I’d eventually burn out my team, my relationships, and myself.
So I tried it.
Why This Stress Technique Actually Works
Here’s what I didn’t understand about stress management for leaders until I started practicing Jocko Willink’s technique:
Your brain’s fear center (the amygdala) can hijack your thinking brain (the prefrontal cortex) in milliseconds. When it detects a threat—whether that’s a tiger or a budget denial—it puts you into fight-or-flight mode.
This is fantastic if you’re being chased.
This is terrible if you just need to make good decisions without alienating your colleagues.
“Good” interrupts that hijacking.
Just for one second.
Just long enough for your thinking brain to come back online.
It’s not magic. It’s not particularly sophisticated.
It’s just a circuit breaker that gives you a chance to choose your response instead of being owned by your stress response. That’s the essence of effective stress management for leaders—creating space between stimulus and response.
What Happened When I Started Saying “Good”
The next time everything started piling up—and when you’re running two operations simultaneously, that’s every other day—I tried it.
Equipment request denied again? I caught myself starting to spiral and thought, “Good. Now I know I need a completely different approach to this budget conversation.” I ended up proposing a phased equipment plan that got approved three months later.
Student crisis requiring immediate intervention? “Good. Better to address this now than have it explode during finals week.”
E-commerce shipment delayed, costing me money? “Good. Now I know this supplier isn’t reliable and I can find better options.”
Accreditation documentation needing immediate attention? “Good. This forces me to build a system so I never miss another deadline.”
It felt ridiculous at first. My stressed-out brain fought me every single time.
But something surprising happened:
I didn’t spiral. I didn’t catastrophize. I didn’t lose the rest of the day to frustration.
Instead, I regained the one thing that’s hardest to maintain under pressure: steady thinking.
And my team noticed.
Not the technique—I never told them about it. But they noticed I was different. Steadier. More present. Less likely to bring my stress into their day.
That colleague I’d snapped at? A few weeks later, they mentioned in passing that I seemed “more like myself lately.”
That’s when I knew this wasn’t just a technique. It was a leadership survival skill.
Eight Years of Using This Stress Strategy
I’ve been using Jocko Willink’s “Good” technique since mid-2017.
Through major career transitions. Through building programs that didn’t exist before. Through the kind of growth that stretches everyone involved. Through taking on increasingly complex operations with more people counting on me.
Seven years of daily practice in stress management for leaders.
And I’m not going to lie—it doesn’t work 100% of the time.
Last month I had a situation where a critical service was falling apart, we were short-staffed, and a faculty member raised a serious safety concern—all in the same afternoon. I tried saying “Good” and my brain basically laughed at me and went straight to panic mode anyway.
“Good” doesn’t make you superhuman.
But it does give you a significantly better batting average.
Most days, when something goes sideways—and something always does—I have a stress management tool that gives me just enough space to choose my response instead of being hijacked by my stress.
Why Every Leader Needs a Stress Management Tool
You don’t need my job title to need better stress management for leaders.
You just need to be human.
You might lead a business facing daily pressure. You might lead a team that needs you steady. You might lead a family while balancing work and life. You might just be trying to manage your own life while juggling health, bills, relationships, obligations, and what to make for dinner.
Whatever your version looks like, we all face the same challenge:
The dishwasher breaks. A deadline moves. A kid melts down. A colleague sends a cryptic email. Your tire goes flat. Your boss schedules a “quick meeting.” Your project hits an unexpected wall.
Life tilts. Stress takes the wheel. Your brain writes disaster screenplays that haven’t even been greenlit yet.
That’s where “Good” becomes your stress management circuit breaker.
What This Stress Management Technique Does for You
This one-word stress management practice buys you the sliver of space you need to:
Stay grounded when everything around you is chaos
Regain clarity when your brain wants to catastrophize
Interpret instead of react when pressure hits
Because without effective stress management for leaders?
Your amygdala hijacks the moment. Your thinking brain shuts down. And suddenly you’re snapping at people who don’t deserve it, catastrophizing scenarios that probably won’t happen, or making decisions you’ll regret by lunch.
But with it?
You get to choose the version of yourself that walks into the moment.
That’s real leadership—whether at home, at work, or inside your own mind.
What Jocko Willink Got Right About Stress
Jocko Willink wasn’t offering toxic positivity when he shared this in Tools of Titans.
He was offering something more valuable: control.
Not control over the situation—you don’t get that.
But control over the space between the situation and your response.
A way of saying:
“This moment might not be good… but I can use it. I can learn from it. I can lead through it. I can turn it into something that moves us forward instead of something that derails my day.”
And some days—most days, honestly—that’s all any of us are trying to do:
Turn a wobbling, everything-is-happening-at-once kind of day into one we can still be proud of.
Try It Once Today
Something will go wrong today.
Not because you’re unlucky—because you’re alive.
And when it does… before your mind jumps to conclusions, before your stress starts writing screenplays, before you snap at someone who doesn’t deserve it…
pause.
One second. One breath. One quiet word:
“Good.”
Not because the moment is good.
But because you can lead yourself through it.
Because you can choose your response instead of being hijacked by your stress.
Because you can be the person your team—or your family, or your future self—needs you to be in the next five minutes.
That one second of intentional pause?
That’s where authentic leadership is born.
Not in the polished lines of your CV.
But in the moment right before you snap.
In the pause before you spiral.
In the breath before you react.
Try it once today. Just once.
When something goes sideways—and it will—say “Good” and see what becomes possible.
Then let me know what happened. I’m genuinely curious what works for other people.
Want More Lessons Like This?
If you want to dive deeper into Jocko Willink’s leadership philosophy and discover other game-changing techniques, I can’t recommend Tools of Titans enough. It’s one of those rare books where you’ll use something from it within 24 hours of reading.
I’ve been practicing this for seven years. It’s not perfect—I still occasionally lose it before lunch—but it’s kept me functional through selling a business, building academic programs from scratch, major career transitions, and the daily chaos of leading complex organizations with real humans who have real problems.
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