A Hard Day, Not a Bad Day

Last night as I lay down to bed beside my beautiful wife, I said, “today was a hard day.”

My choice of words was intentional. I could have said bad day, but I don’t have bad days anymore.

Through Conference21, I met a man named Michael O’Brien. Michael has a concept of his “last bad day,” a day after which he would never call a day bad again.

His last bad day was the day when he was hit head on by a truck at 45 MPH while he was riding his bike and he nearly died. When you think of your last ten “bad days” and compare them to that, you realize they’re not so bad.

Is this just some new age, life coach, faux Zen word gymnastics to mask an actual bad day? Am I suggesting that we should lie to ourselves that things are better than they really are?

On the contrary, I believe that we should avoid lying to ourselves that things are worse than they are.

Five key things happened yesterday. The first was that I woke up with a sense of dread about a particular meeting that was coming up. It an organization which has some members who feel the need to push back and be Devil’s Advocate to every single innovative idea that comes along, and I just didn’t feel like dealing with it. This sense of anxiety stuck with me through the day.

The day ended with checking the mail and seeing a notice from the state that I owed $12,000 in back taxes.

You may be thinking at this point that this is, indeed, what you would call a bad day.

Before we pass verdict, let’s look at the other three events. An event on my calendar was cancelled freeing me up to attend my karate class. In spite of the heat, which I usually don’t do well in, I felt pretty good and was able to give good accounting of myself in the dojo.

I had a meeting with a connection that started as a getting-to-know-you-better call and ended up with a paid invitation to speak.

I had the privilege of having a one to one call with Donnie Boivin, in which, in addition to making an incredible connection, he offered some great insights on what the next steps should be for Conference21 as well as some excellent advice on being more authentic in what I share.

Still think it’s a bad day?

As for that meeting, it turned out to be fine. And the letter from the state? Computer error.

Out of 5 key events, 2 were negative but upon review turned out to be neutral, and 3 were good.

Kind of hard to justify that as a “bad day,” isn’t it?

But I did still have to go through it and feel the anxiety and fend off the worry. Even with all kinds of tools for gratitude and positive thinking and focus at my disposal, there’s still a tiny part of my mind that goes to dark places when I see a crazy letter from the state. Even though I knew it had to be an error, there’s always that voice that says “what if it isn’t?”

It certainly wasn’t an easy day. I’d even say it was a hard day. But I resist the temptation to call it a bad day.

When you look closely, few “bad days” stand up to scrutiny.


Would you like to learn more about eliminating bad days in your life? Reach out to me at http://michaelwhitehouse.coach for your complimentary coaching session to learn

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