Everyone has bad days. Including me.
I’m coming off of two really bad days in a row. You know the kind: The ones that make you question everything you’re doing, the ones that make you wonder if the haters and the ankle-biters are actually right. The ones that fuel our imposter syndrome with a full tank of gas. Those.
You can’t escape them. It’s impossible to live a life where you don’t have them. BUT – You can use them to your advantage.
I took a spin class this morning, and used every silly argument I had in the past two days as fuel. Climbing a hill? I pictured the face of that person who said something hurtful to me yesterday. Racing on a flat? In my head, I was crushing the guy who swore up and down that I was a lock for a specific speaking gig, then chose someone else anyway. Out of the saddle? I was passing the idiot who slammed into me as I was exiting the subway last night then told me what I could go do with myself. End result? 15.75 miles in 45 minutes, and a place in the top five fastest workouts I’ve ever recorded.
We’re all going to have crappy days. We’re all going to have idiots in our lives. How we choose to handle them determines their effect on us. We can either let them get us down, or we can use them as fuel, to propel us higher than we’ve ever been. I don’t know about you, but I choose the latter.
To put it another way: Don’t let people live in your head rent free. Do something good for yourself which makes them pay a LOT for the privilege.
To great adventures,
-Peter
PS: Early bird tickets are live for our June all-day ShankMinds conference in NYC. This is the least expensive that ShankMinds NYC tickets are ever going to be, and they include an in-person coffee with me the day before the conference! We’ve already announced our first keynote, a 30-year retired Marine Sergeant Major, who’s going to give a talk about finding your self-discipline. This is 100% required listening for entrepreneurs! These tickets are going to sell out super-fast – You need to be here!
I really enjoyed this post. It’s great advice for those who have a lot to deal with and go through people putting them down constantly. “Don’t let people live in your head rent free.” I love that quote because as you put it, everyone is going to have those days and people are going to get to you. So since we cant stop it we might as well do something with it that will actually benefit us in the end, like getting a kick-ass workout out of it. We may think “haters” can bring us down and effect us negatively but if we choose to do so, we can make their effect become a positive one for us. Gotta keep the glass half full, right?