I’ve had a lot of really bad days. Bank account negative, deals falling through, and absolutely crushed dreams. I know this isn’t a story that is unique in the slightest. It is something that we all face in one way, shape, or form. Whenever the bad things happen, it feels like my luck just won’t turn around. But this is simply all about perception. On one hand, those bad days are usually the best stories and the ones that I learn the most from. On the other hand, success and winning is a much better feeling. Navigating these moments and trying to keep the progress in the right direction is the biggest challenge to making it through. It is all about perspective.
My partner hiked the Appalachian Trail and she told me that one of the best pieces of advice that she heard was to never quit on a bad day. She told me this when I was having a pretty horrible day. In the moment, my first instinct was to find a way to disprove it because of my negative mindset at the time. Instead, I just sat with the thought because she was 100% correct. Quitting on a bad day never helps because you never know what the next day will bring and quitting something on a good day is the only way to truly know that a sound decision was made. It has almost become a comical moment whenever I have a bad day. After talking about everything that has gone wrong, I am simply met with, “But Steve, you know that whenever you have a bad day, you always have a great day the next day so don’t worry about it.” And the next day, it always seems to be true. It’s equally frustrating, fascinating, and rewarding. Why does this seem to happen? Is it purely the mindset or is there something deeper to this seemingly elusive phenomenon? I decided to dive deep and figure out (or at least try to) why this pattern keeps happening.
The first thing I began to look at was what I did on a bad day. Not just what happened on the day itself, but how I reacted to it. Normally, I would go into the day with the expectation that things would go a certain way and I would be blindsided by something that derails all of it. I then find myself in some sort of slight panic to fix the problem. But regardless of the positive or negative mindset, the root of the problem is really the expectation. I was having a conversation recently with somebody where we were talking about pulling certain levers in business in such a way that you can more likely guarantee success. In sharing some life experiences, we came to an agreement that life is mostly out of our control and that trying to guarantee something is met with little success. The most that we can do is to prepare as best that we can, control what we can control, and let go of the rest. The attachment to an outcome, at its root, is really synonymous with expectation. When we are expecting a certain result, we are already setting ourselves up for disappointment. Besides, if there are no expectations, the only reasonable outcome is to be pleasantly surprised. Preparation, as it relates to a bad day or a good day, is where the real impact and progress is made.
In business, and much of life, when good fortune strikes, it is usually attributed to luck. The founder who “suddenly” is successful is considered lucky, the athlete that wins the competition had a stroke of luck to beat the opponent. But luck is simply when preparation meets opportunity. So what does preparation look like to ensure that luck becomes inevitable? It begins with knowing the direction and the why behind a thought and conviction around an action. Each day, without an expectation, can be a good or a bad day. It is really about putting one foot in front of the other. Some days I make massive progress, other days I make a little bit of progress. Whether it is a good or a bad day, progress becomes consistent and is not influenced by any type of external influence.
Endurance sports, at least for me, is a direct parallel to my professional life. There are good days, bad days, but it is more about doing the thing than having everyday be positive. As I’ve continued to build my aerobic capacity in long-distance swimming, I’ve had some really bad days training. I went for a big swim a couple weeks ago and I was feeling positive, I had an expectation that I was going to absolutely crush it. I completed the swim, feeling awesome. I had exceeded my expectations and I was feeling incredible about it. Then, I was blindsided by finding out that I had not fueled enough during my swim and about an hour afterwards, I was completely wrecked with a horrible headache, an elevated body temperature, and didn’t recover for two days. I looked at that training day, objectively, as a bad day because it didn’t go as I had planned it to go. However, despite that setback, I had still completed a big training session and learned a lot about how my body reacts to that kind of stress. I decided that I would prepare for my next swim differently. About a week later, I swam well, recovered well, and objectively had a good day. It all came down to my preparation and being committed to just making progress, accepting the good and the bad.
After the horrible experience I had swimming, I could have quit on that bad day. It would have been easy to do, I would have felt like I was saving myself from more bad days. But then, I wouldn’t have been able to experience the good day of swimming that came after it. After the good day, more good days came, a few bad ones, and progress continued to happen. And that is the lesson in all of this, just don’t quit on the bad days. Let them come and go and just focus on making progress. One step in front of the other, one moment at a time, without an expectation. Much like my swimming or entrepreneurial ventures, it is an endurance event, not a sprint. And anybody that has done any type of endurance event, athletic or not, will know that 1% better every day is much better than 10% better for a few days and then 30% worse the next. Whatever you do, don’t quit on a bad day.