On getting back up when the going gets tough

One of the heuristics I’ve been using when I have a bad day comes from Chris Sacca in Tools of Titans: "TONIGHT, I WILL BE IN MY BED. In 2009, Chris did a charity bicycle ride with the Trek Travel team from Santa Barbara, California, to Charleston, North Carolina: I had a phrase I kept repeating in my head over and over again, which was, ‘Tonight, I will be in my bed. Tonight, I will be in my bed. Tonight, I will be in my bed.’ . . . It was something I repeated to remind me that the pain of what I was going through was temporary and that, no matter what, at the end of that day, I would be in my bed that night.”

It reminds me that tomorrow will be a better day and that I’m safe, even though I’m having a bad day.

As I progressed in my career and was assigned more responsibilities, this heuristic had one shortcoming: when the day gets pretty bad, I still need to be positive because I’m in a leadership position.

One day, an employee decided to resign and a customer did not renew his contract. I could not get the negative feelings affect the way I was handling a client session to moderate and a pitch to a prospective client.

At that point, I decided to reframe Chris sentence: “The next meeting is going to be better and tonight, I will be in my bed.”