I'm glad that strategy worked out for you. It's very easy to get sucked into something (anything), it becoming your entire world, and everything triggering a life or death stress response, when in reality it's not a problem. Being able to take distance from a situation as you mention, and remember that you're just sitting in an office and it's not like you're literally about to die is a very important skill to have.

However, many people don't have it, or just get too apathetic about the job if they detach like that, and live very stressful lives. I've personally seen it happen several times.