You understand the model, and you have started identifying your own stress signals. This final lesson in the unit introduces the only ongoing habit the program asks you to build.

Each entry takes only a couple of minutes, and you do not need to complete one every day.

The instruction is simple: keep a record and write down stressful problems when they happen, rather than trying to reconstruct them later.

Each entry includes four fields.

• What happened. Describe the situation itself, not the story you are telling yourself about it. Simply “briefly describe the problem.”
• How big it looked. Record your first impression of the demand. This captures the first judgement from Lesson 1 as it happens.
• What I thought I had available. Write down what you believed you could do about the situation at that moment. This captures the second judgement from Lesson 1. It is also the side of the gap that most people rarely consider.
• What I did. “Describe your behaviour: what you actually did to try to cope with the problem.” If you did nothing, record that too. Doing nothing is still a response, and it belongs in the record.

Why record individual moments instead of entire days?

A daily rating might tell you that Tuesday felt like a seven out of ten. It does not tell you what happened or what you could change.

An individual episode has clear parts: a trigger, an interpretation, a response, and an outcome. You can examine and work with each of these. A rating for an entire day does not give you the same information.

Use the signals you identified in Lesson 4 as your prompt. When one of those signals appears, that is the moment to record an episode. This is why the two lessons are placed next to each other.

There is one important mistake to avoid because it can quietly make the record less useful.

“I felt as though he no longer cared about me” may look like a feeling, but it is actually a thought. It is your interpretation of another person’s behaviour.

Interpretations belong under how big it looked, not under what happened.

This distinction may seem overly precise, but it matters. You can compare an interpretation with the available facts. The event itself cannot be debated in the same way. If you record an interpretation as a fact, you are less likely to examine whether it is accurate. Unit 2 will help you explore this part of the record.

Two things often happen during the first week.

First, people discover that their entries are shorter than expected. A whole week that felt filled with vague worry may turn out to contain four specific stressful episodes. Four episodes are much easier to examine than an entire difficult week.

Second, the third field is often the hardest to complete. Most people can quickly describe what happened and what they did. They then pause when asked what they thought they had available.

That pause is useful information, not a sign that the exercise has failed. Most people pay close attention to the demands they face but rarely notice the resources they believe they have.

Your entries are not added together or scored. There are no categories, targets, streaks, or grades. Nothing you enter here leaves your device. It is not shared with your employer, your manager, or us.

Later in the program, the tool will help you notice the stage at which you tend to get stuck when working through a problem. This is the only conclusion it draws from your entries.

Try to record three or four episodes before beginning Unit 2. That will give you real situations to work with. In the next unit, you will take one problem through the entire process, and it will come from this record.