Distraction-Proof® Advisor Ideas

Rough days never feel good, but they’re more valuable than you probably realize.

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When I was getting ready to compete in my Olympic swim, I had my training logbooks with me, and I would look back at all the tough training sets I had done leading up to this point. I could remember the races, but the races weren’t the thing I was reflecting on. They were the tough times in training that I wanted to bring to mind. Remembering the tough sets. Remembering the grinding it out, feeling absolutely exhausted when my coach would say, “Just get one more of these done.” They were the things that reinforced me for coming up to a great performance.

I always love reading the story about David and Goliath. When David was before Saul, David recounted why he was ready to face Goliath. He mentioned that as a shepherd boy, years back, he’d gone out to fight the lions and bears. He mentioned tough days. Confronting lions and bears, when you’re a shepherd boy, is not a good day! And even though he’d killed the lions and bears, I’m sure at the end of that day he really would not have wanted to repeat that. And yet, it was that training that had him ready to face Goliath.

It was the same as the hard sets I had done in swimming that had me ready to compete for my Olympic medal.

You’re going to have lousy days, or days that immediately you might label as lousy. The right verbiage didn’t come out the way you wanted it to land it when you were talking with a potentially great prospect. The CRM system you were operating, or your financial-planning software that you had all queued up ready to roll at this important client meeting just didn’t work. Things didn’t happen properly. You felt like you had to wing some responses to cover some ground that you’d normally do in a heartbeat with a nice display on a screen. When you get out of that meeting, you think, “Oh, that will never happen again!”

But there’s the learning point: you’ll be prepared next time. You’ll lock in that experience and grow stronger from it for next time.

So when you have lousy days,

1. Don’t get down. Review the day and realize the world hasn’t ended.


2. Learn from them. Take stock of what happened and figure out how you’ll do it better next time, how you’ll be more prepared.


3. Follow through. Don’t just think about what you want to go better. Past a certain point, continuing to think about it is irrelevant. Instead, act on making it better. Make sure you have that plan B in place. Make sure you know the next steps to move toward if something happens, if that software goes down while you’re talking with a client.

Be prepared by learning from lousy days, when things don’t go as planned. Learn from the down days, be best prepared going forward, and approach that next opportunity with even more confidence.

I look forward to bringing you another Distraction-Proof Advisor Idea next week.