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PPI #133: 4 Steps to Restart A Bad Day

Eric Partaker

Bad days happen all the time, but with a few simple steps, you can turn a bad day into a good one and get right back on track.

KEY POINTS

Treat a Bad Day as Normal – Smile, bad days happen. If you choose to hold a grudge against the day, the rest of the day will be guaranteed to be bad. 

Revisit What Was Important That Day – Did you have a plan? Are you sticking to that plan? If not, what can you do to get back on track?

Schedule, Show Up, Single Task – Create a new plan if you need to and then schedule what it is that you would like to do for the rest of the day. Show up to the appointments, and single task during that time. 
Take Breaks Often –  Your bad day could be a form of exhaustion. Have you been working hard without taking breaks? Are you burnt out? Get out and take a five minute walk, get the blood flowing again.

 

TRANSCRIPT

So you’re midway through what’s turned out to be a bad day and you’d like to turn it around. So what do you do? Let’s face it, bad days happen all the time, but with a few simple steps, you can turn a bad day into a good one and get right back on track. Today you’re going to learn exactly how to do that.

Hi, my name is Eric Partaker, and I’ve been recognized as an award-winning entrepreneur, as well as the CEO of the Year. I’m also a best-selling author of two books, including The Three Alarms.

In the past when I had a bad day, I thought it was like a nonrecoverable event. It’s like, boom, that was it. The rest of the day, it was just gone and I was miserable to be around. Perhaps you can relate to this, but if you can, it’s just not the case. There are four simple things that you can do to restart a bad day.

Number one, treat it as normal. Smile. Bad days happen. It’s just how life is and if the moment that the day’s bad, if you’re going to choose to hold the grudge against the day or those around you and just kind of act that way, well, the rest of the day is guaranteed to be bad. But if you can just treat it as normal, that we have our ups and we have our downs, and if you can focus on still smiling, okay, the day hasn’t gone, as well as I would like, maybe because if someone else is doing maybe cause of your doing, but you still have a choice.

Right there in that moment, how would I like the rest of the day to go? How do I want to feel? What do I want to project? Do I want to project happiness? Do I want to project unhappiness? It’s up to you. So treat the day as normal and once… Treat a bad day as a normal occurrence and once that happens, make a decision. Do I smile from this moment on?Or am I going to continue to be in a bad mood? So I think, you know the right answer on that one.

Number two, if you want to restart a bad day, you need to revisit well, what was important in the day? And if you can’t revisit what was important because you didn’t have a clear plan, bingo. That might be the reason why you’re potentially having a bad day. So revisit what was important. Did you have a plan? Are you sticking to that plan? If not, what can you do to get back on the plan? Look at the time that’s left available and decide how you’re going to allocate it. What are you going to use it towards? We all have 24 hours in the day and it’s just up to us to decide how we’re going to use that time.

And on that note, number three, when it comes to how you’re going to use that time, focus on the three S’s; schedule, show up, single task. Super simple framework that you can use to get your day back on track. Decide what it is that you want to be doing. Refer back to your plan. Create a new plan if you need to and then schedule what it is that you would like to do for the rest of the day. Show up for those appointments, even if they’re with yourself, and single task during that time. Don’t work on anything else, just work on that one thing until it’s finished. Schedule, show up, single task. Three S’s that will help you turn a bad day into a good one.

And last but not least, if you want to turn a bad day into a good one, let’s take breaks often. What has become a bad day is actually a form of exhaustion. It’s that we’ve just been working so hard perhaps, without taking any breaks, that we’re just getting burnt out. We’re getting completely frazzled and we just need a break. Maybe we need to get out and get some sun or walk five, 10 minutes, get the blood flowing again, but take a break. I tried never to work longer than 50 minutes at a time without taking a break of five or 10 minutes and even in between that time, even in those 50 minutes, every 10 to 15 minutes, I’m getting up, moving at least and moving the body and not staying seated for too long.

How do I do that? I just use a simple timer on my watch. I set it for somewhere between 15 and 20 minutes. I set it precisely for 16 minutes and 40 seconds just because it ends up being a thousand seconds, but you could set it for whatever you like and that’s just like a little micro break for me. When that goes off, I literally just stand up. I might go get a glass of water. I sit back down and continue working but after about 50 minutes, five zero, 50 minutes, then I tend to get up for a longer break. So maybe five or 10 minutes. Go for a walk and that keeps you energized and that keeps today kind of fun and vibrant because our bodies were designed to move. We’re not designed to be seated all day. So if you’re having a bad day and you want to restart it, it could be that you haven’t been taking a enough breaks.

I’d love to hear from you, so don’t forget to leave a comment and a rating as well. And if you’d like to get a copy of my new book, The Three Alarms, please head over to my website at ericpartaker.com. That’s ericpartaker.com, where you can pick up a free digital copy of my new best-selling book, The 3 Alarms.

Follow:
Eric has been named "CEO of the Year" at the 2019 Business Excellence Awards, one of the "Top 30 Entrepreneurs in the UK" by Startups Magazine, and among "Britain's 27 Most Disruptive Entrepreneurs" by The Telegraph.
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