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Today was a good day. I made it that way!
What about you? Did you make your day go one way or the other?
The famous motivational speaker Zig Ziglar used to ask the question in his seminars if you could do anything to ruin your life? Could you sleep around on your significant other? Could you rob a bank? Could you crash your car on purpose? Could you.. he had a long list of things that could ruin your day and your life. Everyone always laughed.
Then he would stop, clap his hands together and say, well if there are things you can do today to ruin your life, is there anything you could do to make your life better? Why not? You can do all these negative things, why can’t you do the opposite and make your life better?
I pose to you the same question only in a reference to a day. Could you do anything to ruin your day? Couldn’t you do the opposite to make your day great?
To ruin my day I could stay in bed hours after I should get up. I could ignore my todo list and just watch Netflix (without the chill part) and eat ice cream all day. I could skip my workout and ruin my 75 Hard Challenge. All of this would ruin my day. Most of it actually sounds fun: Sleeping in, “Netflix and chill”, eating a tub of ice cream, and being lazy all sound appealing on one level. But on the other hand…
Talk about ruining my day on the way to ruining my life. It would be a slow painful death. It might take decades but sooner or later too many of those days will destroy you.
So do the opposite. I got up with my alarm clock. I sat down and did my reading. Then I pulled out my Focus Planner wrote down 3 major things I was going to get done today. Then wrote my five things for my 75 Hard Challenge. Under that I wrote out my miscellaneous other tasks I wanted to get done today (including this post). On the other page I wrote out my goals for the year, quarter, month, and week. I do this everyday to keep everything in the top of my mind. Then I pounded a protein shake (to stay on my diet) and hit the road with a 50 (actually 47) pound pack for a 3 mile hike. I got home and got to work on my todo list.
This is how you have great days. Because I stayed on task I was able to get some extra things done and spend time with my wife and kid.
This is how I have a good day. How do you make your good days happen?
75 Hard I will Conquer,
Ben Branam