In this episode, we discuss how we can get over bad moments and setbacks by focusing on the right things so they don’t ruin our day or week.
Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista. In this podcast, my goal is to give you quick lessons that you can reflect on in your journal so you can grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually and have a better career, better relationships, and better personal finances while you enjoy your morning cup of coffee.
I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe, where I combine self-development coaching and financial planning for Latino Professionals.
At the end of today’s podcast episode, I’m going to give you a prompt question to reflect on in your journal. The idea is to take one to five minutes to reflect on today’s lesson and write a minimum of one paragraph on how you can apply the lesson in your life. You can use an actual journal, a word document like on Google Drive, or your note-taking app like Evernote. The idea is that you’re actually thinking about how to process the information to help you improve your life.
In today’s episode, we are going to talk about the quote, did you have a bad day or did you have a bad five minutes that you’ve been milking all day. And I love this quote because it keeps things in perspective. As people, we tend to only think about what is happening to us or going to happen to us.
I would make the argument that when we do nice things for other people, we’re doing it so it makes us feel good. There is nothing wrong with doing things for other people, but don’t lie to yourself and don’t get upset when people don’t do nice things back to you.
So going back to the quote, we have to ask ourselves, did we really have a bad day or did we have a bad five minutes that we’ve been milking all day. For myself, I’m very momentum-driven. I don’t like to start something new unless I can give it my full attention. So when something goes wrong like the internet not working or finding a screw in my tire, it can cause me to get lazy and lose my momentum.
This is why it’s important for me to remember this quote. Am I really having a bad day, or am I just milking it? If the internet is down, then I can do something else. I can write, I can record a podcast, I can read, I can exercise. There are a million other things I can do but the worst thing I can do is focus on the thing that is giving me the bad day.
The longer I get upset, the longer I’m staying in the past with my problems. The best thing to do is just move on and just say that’s part of life. So having the right perception is the best tool you can have when things are going wrong.
You can go through a sucky moment in life but you can use that as a tool to do better in the future as well. I say the best lesson I learned in high school was from a book called Fahrenheit 451 and that is that you can’t have your good days without your bad day. How would you know what a good day is if you didn’t have bad days as a contrast?
If you had nothing but good days, then the tiniest mishap can turn a molehill into a mountain. So there is a silver lining with bad events, but you should not hold onto that bad event longer than you have to. I find that if I can’t shake off something negative going on in my mind, the best thing I can do is write down my feelings on a piece of paper and describe what I’m feeling. Then usually I’m able to move on with my life.
So don’t hold in those emotions and realize what you can and can’t control the situation. Nothing will drive you faster to being crazy than trying to control something that you can’t control. I can’t control when I get a screw in my tire for the most part unless I decide not to drive ever again, which might be a possibility but probably not. Since I’m not willing to give up my driving in the future, then I have to accept the risks of owning a car and just be prepared for them and have the resources to handle them.
Even if you get pity from someone else, it’s not going to make you stronger from that event, it’s just going to make you weaker and I’ve heard on a different podcast that venting to someone else is not that helpful. I would just write down what you’re feeling and then focus on the things you can control in the situation. It probably won’t be the most comfortable thing to do but it will be the right thing to do for yourself and getting over that setback.
That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, did you have a bad day or a bad five minutes that you’ve been milking all day. For most of us, we’re just having a bad five minutes. Even during this pandemic, it’s real easy to take a bad five minutes and turn it into a whole day ordeal because we can’t change our environment that much. I know I like to also go on walks to clear my mind and lower those stress hormones. So try exercising as well along with your writing, but I feel that writing is the better of the two options but injunction with each other, it’s the best remedy for getting over your bad five minutes. The winners are going to be the ones who can move on the faster and start building, so don’t get left behind because you can’t let go of something that’s out of your control.
So in your journal, ask yourself, are you holding on to something that you shouldn’t be holding on to. How is that event making you feel? What can you control from that event? What can’t you control about that event? What is the next best thing you can do to recover? Knowing your mind will help you turn a bad day into a bad five minutes and asking yourself questions and answering those questions will help you out.
Thanks for listening today! To get a free copy of my audiobook “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and you can download it right there.
I have a quiz on my website that grades your inner circle, so if you want to find out if your inner circle is an A, B, C, D, or F, you can take that quiz at growwithjoe.me/quiz
I’m also trying to do a feedback Friday episode, so if you have a question that you would like to have my answer on the air, just e-mail me at [email protected]
I’m also on Instagram at Grow With Joe and Facebook just look up Grow With Joe
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Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
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