Being a speaker is a strange job. One week you are really busy and the next week it's quieter. Thats life, that's business. I can handle that. This week has been a quieter week and to be honest it hasn't been the best week, the other day was simply not a good day. Amongst the admin and marketing there were a couple of lighter moments, but not many.
But, there were also three really annoying moments.
Another speaker caused me some hassle, a good client surprisingly let me down, and after rearranging a few things and driving to an appointment, a big coaching client just didn't show up.
I'd had it.
Three days of office work culminating in three big hassles just about finished me off. I was truly fed up.
Yes, you heard me right. I was fed up, ready for a break, and ready, at one point, for a new career!
Thankfully I'm not the kind of speaker who pretends they 'never have a bad day', my friend Paul McGee taught me that, in fact he reminded me just the other day. Handy.
You see having a not so good day is quite normal. It's what we do with it that counts.
So I went home grumpily, ate my tea grumpily, and then grumpily went into my man cave for an hour or so.
Then when I was ready, I decided to do some thing about it. I was ready to change 'my state' as NLP people would say. I put on some good loud music while I emptied and stacked the dishwasher, and then I simply went up to my whiteboard, grabbed a pen and wrote down in columns – the three problems, the gig i have tomorrow, my main to-do item, and a list of things I was grateful for. I then thought about the problems and asked one of the most powerful questions – was it my fault? And, did I try my best? All three problems weren't my fault and there's nothing more I could do to sort them out, so I crossed them out and concentrated on tomorrow and also on the good stuff in my life. I'd tried my best, it wasn't my fault, so I'm not going to dwell on the issues.
Not an easy task, but a simple one.
In all the years I've been researching real success in education and the workplace I've come to this conclusion. The difference between people who make it and those that don't, is this: it's what they do on their not so good days. It's what they put into practice when they don't feel like it – thats what really counts. When have you had a day like this? How did you move on as my mate Paul McGee would say?
The world is complex enough without us making it harder for ourselves.
Find the strategy that works for you, and put it into practice – often.
I do.
