HAVING A BAD DAY? It happens to everyone. But it does NOT have to be Permanent, Personal or Pervasive. WHAT’S THE ANTIDOTE to your negative, bad day emotions? Gratitude and Perspective.
#30: Bad days are NOT Permanent, Personal or Pervasive
with Tyler Small
“I am a worthless failure.” “The whole world is against me.” You ever have one of those days? It has been one of those days for me. And I want to talk about three words.
Woo! Today is one of those days. Not the best. Rough. I've had to struggle a little bit today. And I wanted to talk about bad days. Everybody has them. And I wanted to talk about three words. 'Cause I don't think bad days have to be Permanent, Personal or Pervasive.
But in the midst of it, in the darkest corner inside your mind sometimes - I think we all have this happen - these three words: Permanent, Personal and Pervasive. And I want to talk about these words and how I was able to work through and make it not quite as bad as it would have been otherwise.
A bad day for you can destroy relationships, right? So I want to help you to not have such a bad day, to not make those big withdrawals from your relationships, but rather to have a little bit more positive day. Instead of having a 0 percent day, maybe have a 25%, you know, or a 50%.
So let me talk about these three words. Permanent. Sometimes when we're down in the dumps, we want to think that it's going to last forever. That's the temptation. In reality we know - if we think about it, take a few deep breaths - that it's not going to last forever. There's a light at the end of the tunnel. This is only a matter of time.
The second one is Personal - personal meaning, “It's me. I am a worthless failure.” We don't want to think that! If you start to think that, the antidote is: “Oh, my goodness, everybody has a bad day. Everybody has bad days. And this is just one of my bad days. I'm not worth any more, or any less, than anyone else.” Personal.
The third one is Pervasive. Sometimes the temptation is to think, “Oh my goodness, everything is against me. The whole world is against me.” You ever felt like that? I know I have. The antidote is gratitude. It's to think about the things in your life that are wonderful.
I'm going to do this. I'm going to go through this gratitude exercise with you. I've been doing it all day, but I'll tell you I had some really amazing meetings today.
I had a great coaching session with a lady named Heady Roche from the UK. Super amazing lady. She's applying the five-star approach to several of her relationships. And she just had some amazing stories, some real life turnarounds just in the last couple of weeks. And we're going to have her on the podcast, so watch for that. Heady Roche, a super cool lady.
Another thing that happened today: I've known this guy for about 10 years. I first met him online on LinkedIn, and he was this super awesome guy. We connected and we've directed each other to some resources. But I never thought I would actually meet him. I went to this event today and it was super cool. This guy ended up in a group of four with me. There's me and three other people, and he was one of them! And I thought, Oh my goodness, this guy... he starts these big companies from scratch. So I got to talk to him - he gave me some cool ideas. He's just an amazing individual.
And then, I got to spend a little bit of time with my family today. I did take a little nap. Naps tend to help me out a lot.
And, I got a bunch of things done that have kind of been sitting around.
I've written two books. The first one was the Five-star Approach to Parenting. And the second one is How to Build a Five-star Relationship in 21 Days and Live Happily Ever After. That's for couples. And so I've got this book for parents that has the e-book. it has the paperback, and we're recording the audio book. Almost done.
The couples book was my second book, and we've got the e-book out, and the paperback is very close to being released. My wife goes by Peesh - Peesh, like "capiche" - Peesh Small. I'm going to have her on to help, help me talk about these books. They're a lot about our family; how I went from basically a zero to hero as a father and as a husband. So you'll see those things coming out soon. But I was able to finally finish processing this paperback, getting everything ready to go. That was exciting.
And had just some really cool things end up happening today and, you know, it wasn't that terrible. It was a hard day, but it wasn't that terrible. It was actually a pretty great day overall, looking back. I mean, just being able to breathe, I consider a major, major thing. Not everybody can breathe freely, but I can breathe freely. And I love that.
If you're having a bad day - or you notice somebody's having a bad day - instead of letting the bad day destroy your relationships, let it build them. Or if you see somebody kind of ruinin' some relationships, think about maybe extending a little more kindness and patience to them - help them manage their emotions. Help them hack their emotional intelligence.
I just want to leave you with this thought about astronauts. There's some research done, mentioned in the book by Adam Grant - his newest book is called Think Again, and I'll talk about this book more later, but... just this one thing from the book: he talks about how astronauts, after they go to space and are able to look back at the earth in its wholeness, without any borders... They can see across continents. They can see across the whole earth, from Africa to North America, from North America to Asia, they can see from Europe all the way across, right? South America, Antarctica... the whole thing. And in a whole span, they can see, like, half the earth.
So there's this huge change that happens as they look at their autobiographies and interviews ... and they've done research and they've named this phenomenon; I can't remember what they call it, but... It's this change that happens. They go from their orientation of thought being more focused closely to themselves and their own families and their own issues to more oriented toward the whole human race. They think more about the good of all people, instead of thinking about just themselves or even their own community. And their own problems become less important - their own issues and the things that they would normally think about. They become less selfish and they think more about the good of all people.
I didn't want to babble on about that. But if you can imagine in your mind looking across continents with no borders. Seeing through all of the superficial things that separate us. Seeing that we're all on this planet together, and it kind of unites us.
Think about that if you're having a bad day. It doesn't have to be so bad. It doesn't have to be Permanent, Personal or Pervasive.
I hope you have a great day. I'm Tyler Small, and this is hacking emotional intelligence.