Read Before You Buy
The Author's Note and Introduction from "Stop Your Spiral"—plus audio versions. Because you should know what you're getting into before you meet Gary.
Listen to the Author's Note
Read by Clayton M. Myhill
Author's Note
When Your Book Stages a Coup
Or: How I Lost Editorial Control to a Transmission Named Sam
"Who actually needs another self-help book?"
That's what you're thinking, isn't it? Standing there, holding this thing like it might bite you. Or worse, like it might actually work this time.
I've read 147 of them. That's not research—that's a cry for help with tax benefits.
Case in point: I once baptized a turkey at 3 AM.
Not metaphorically. Literally. Three AM, me and twenty pounds of poultry in the bathtub, Googling 'turkey emergency defrost.' The turkey still tasted like failure. Just baptized failure.
That's when I realized something. We're all doing some version of this. Elaborate 3 AM performances to avoid admitting we're struggling. Everyone needs permission to stop pretending their disaster isn't showing.
That turkey moment? I was on fire. Not the turkey... me. Running around my kitchen making it worse, not knowing there was an actual system for this kind of disaster.
Turns out, we all forgot something important. Something we actually knew once. That's what this book kept trying to tell me.
This book was supposed to be a professional framework with actionable steps. Instead, emotional intelligence got a truck with a broken transmission. Somehow that's the whole point.
Sam was supposed to be one paragraph. Sam had other plans. He became everyone's emotional support disaster. The patron saint of psychological clunkers held together by denial and emotional WD-40.
The book staged its coup around 3 AM. Same time I was bathing that turkey, probably not a coincidence. It started making editorial decisions without authorization. It turned instructions into permission slips for the chaos you were already hiding.
It insisted on starting with something we all forgot we had. Not the framework. Not the methodology. Something more immediate. Because half of us don't know it exists, and the other half need to remember how to use it.
"But people need the complete system first," I argued in the middle of the night.
Sam's transmission disagreed: "They need to stop being on fire FIRST. You can't read a map with your head on fire."
Fair point.
The italicized permission breaks? Started as formatting. Readers turned them into micro-therapy, reading them first like nutritional labels for feelings. The disasters stopped being warnings. They became recognition.
By Chapter 6, I wasn't even driving anymore. The book had commandeered the narrative, explaining why baptizing poultry made sense at 3 AM. Our disasters always make perfect sense in the moment. It's only in daylight they look insane.
This isn't what I planned. What emerged was disaster footage with commentary. Turns out people didn't want another expert. They wanted someone who survives and makes it teachable instead of tragic.
This book gives you permission to navigate your chaos. Not fix it instantly. Not hide it behind Facebook or Instagram posts about "growth mindset." Navigate it! Your disaster isn't something to own like a burden. It's your terrain to learn, and now you actually have the map.
That's what STOP YOUR SPIRAL actually teaches. Not how to prevent fires (impossible), but what to do when they inevitably happen. Tools you forgot you had. Systems you didn't know existed. Navigation for the chaos that is any given week.
Example: Last week, my son turned downstairs into "Explosions: The Musical" at 10 PM on a school night. Important call happening. Did I use my emotional intelligence tools? No. I became a passive-aggressive ceiling ghost while Gary (my right eye twitch) developed his own LinkedIn profile.
That's not failing the system. That's actually being human with instructions you'll ignore.
You'll forget these tools exactly when you need them most. Probably remember them in the middle of the night, after the crisis. Feel like you brought a plastic spoon to an emotional knife fight. Good. That means they're working, just not on your timeline.
Your failure at failing correctly is still progress. Call it whatever helps.
This book teaches you to stop your spiral and navigate your disaster truck without it catching fire every other day. Eventually you can race it, lead convoys. Right now? Stop grinding gears and calling it personality.
Your complete emotional navigation system starts here. After coffee. Or tea. We're not savages.
Yes, you have tools you didn't know existed. And no, nobody told you either.
—Clayton
Calgary, 2025
Listen to the Introduction
Read by Clayton M. Myhill
Introduction
Wait, What?! We Have an Emergency Brake?!
Or: How I Failed at Toy Assembly and Discovered We're All Running Cave People Software
Christmas Eve. Kids finally asleep. Me versus a toy kitchen that would defeat NASA engineers.
Three hours in, when my wife at the time walked in and said, "You're doing it wrong," I was emotionally on fire. My right eye twitching. Jaw clenched. Planning responses that would've ended my marriage.
But I didn't say them. Or throw anything. Or do any of the seventeen destructive things my brain was suggesting.
Want to know why? Because I'd discovered something a few months earlier. Something we all knew once but forgot.
Stop. Drop and Roll.
The same thing they taught us in kindergarten. Before Susan from Finance learned to weaponize "lacks strategic vision." Before any of us needed emergency systems for daily life.
Your Operating System Isn't Broken (It's Just Old)
Your amygdala (that jumpy security guard in your brain) treats every passive-aggressive email like a saber-toothed tiger. Every "we need to talk" text? Mammoth stampede.
You're not broken. You're running mammoth-hunting software in a world of LinkedIn notifications. It's like trying to use DOS to run Netflix.
This book started as something responsible. Charts. Frameworks. "Implementation matrices"–which I still can't define but successful people definitely have them.
Then Sam's truck showed up and changed everything. But first, you need to understand your built-in Emotional Emergency Brake™.
The Emergency Brake That's Been There All Along
Remember STOP, DROP, and ROLL?
It works for emotional fires too. When you're combusting, when Gary (my right eye twitch) starts his interpretive dance, when your shoulders become permanent earrings, when you're composing that email that would end your career, you need the same emergency reaction.
The Emotional Emergency Brake™: STOP, DROP, ROLL
STOP: Create one pause between "I'm on fire" and "Now everyone else is too." This is what stops your spiral before it becomes your day.
Three seconds. That's all. Long enough for your prefrontal cortex to tap your amygdala on the shoulder and whisper, "Hey buddy, maybe don't."
DROP: Drop the story you're writing. Where you're the hero and everyone else is the villain.
DROP doesn't mean the story's wrong. It means: "This might be true, might not be, but right now I'm putting it down like a hot pan I was about to throw."
ROLL: Create distance–physical, emotional, or temporal.
- Physical: Leave the room. Take a walk. Hide in the bathroom.
- Emotional: "That's interesting. Let me think about it."
- Temporal: "Can we revisit this tomorrow?"
Rolling creates space for your rational brain to come back online.
"Your inability to remember these tools when you need them doesn't mean you're failing. It means you're human. The tools work even when you can't name them, even when you apply them backwards, even when you only remember them at 3 AM."
This is just the beginning. The full book covers the complete 5-component ENS framework, introduces you to Gary properly, and gives you everything you need to stop spiraling and start navigating.
Ready to Meet Gary?
The full book has 7 chapters of disaster navigation, permission slips, and tools you forgot you had.