The Daily Mastermind
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Episode 342 · Feb 24, 2021

How to Find Value in a Bad Day and Change Your Perspective

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George Wright III opens this episode of the Daily Mastermind with a question most people would rather not sit with: not just whether you have had a bad day, but whether you have learned to appreciate one.

The instinct in a rough moment is to wish things were different. But George argues that the quality of your life depends less on what happens to you and more on the filter through which you see it. Your perspective shapes your thoughts, your thoughts drive your actions, and your actions create your results. That chain starts with how you choose to interpret a hard day.

Why Bad Days Are Necessary for Growth

Without struggle, there is no learning and no growth. George references a line from a book: if life were easy, it would not be hard. The point lands simply: easy circumstances do not build capacity. You need friction, setbacks, and hard seasons to develop the strength that makes a good life feel earned.

Human beings need certainty, but they also need uncertainty, change, and challenge. Bad days are not a glitch in your experience. They are part of the design.

How Struggle Teaches You to Appreciate What You Have

The second reason to value a hard day is contrast. Without low points, good days lose their meaning. George recalls being in the middle of a difficult stretch when a song by Brantley Gilbert came on the radio. The song's central question stuck with him: would you know your own strength, would you feel like you had earned anything, if you had never faced hardship? Would you even know a dream come true if you had never had a few that did not work out?

That shift in attention is the core of what George is teaching. You cannot manufacture genuine gratitude for the good in your life if you have never felt what it means to struggle.

The Role of Perspective in Creating Your Reality

"Our perspective really is what creates our life because our thoughts and our filter on our thoughts are what drive our actions. And our actions based on our thoughts are going to create our results."

George is direct: it is not circumstances that define your experience, it is the lens you bring to them. When you are in a bad day, the first task is not to escape it. The first task is to change your filter.

This is not about pretending everything is fine. It is a practical recognition that the same event will produce different outcomes depending on how you interpret it. Perspective is a skill, and like any skill, it can be developed deliberately.

Five Strategies to Shift Your Mindset on a Hard Day

George offers five concrete steps for when a bad day arrives.

Surround yourself with positive input. Seek out positive people, podcasts, music, and books. Immersing yourself in that kind of content changes the mental environment you are operating in and makes it easier to hold a better perspective.

Practice gratitude. George points out that it is nearly impossible to stay focused on what is going wrong while you are actively counting your blessings. Write a list of everything you are grateful for: your health, your relationships, your opportunities. Push your mind into that path, because the neurons that fire together wire together.

Journal your thoughts. Many of the thoughts that weigh on you build pressure because they stay locked inside. Writing them down gets them out of your head and onto paper, where they lose some of their grip. Journaling is not only for capturing memories or gratitude. It is also a release for the thoughts that need to get out.

Find a mentor. A good mentor helps you see yourself more clearly, gives you someone to bounce ideas off, and holds perspective when you cannot find it on your own.

Prepare in advance. You know bad days are coming. Build a plan for them before they arrive: a playlist, a book, a quote, a friend to call. Knowing what you will do when the day turns hard means you do not have to figure it out while you are already in the middle of it.

Action Steps

  • The next time you have a difficult day, pause and ask: what can I learn from this, and what does it remind me I have to be grateful for?
  • Start a gratitude list today. Aim for ten items and write them by hand.
  • Create a bad day plan: choose two or three resources (a song, a podcast, a person) you will turn to when things get hard.
  • Begin a journal practice, even if only for five minutes. Write down what is on your mind without editing yourself.
  • Identify one mentor or trusted advisor you can reach out to when you need a perspective check.

Hard days are not the enemy of a good life. They are the proof that you are living one. The downs, the scuffs, the scars, and everything you put behind you are also what make the wins feel real.

It is never too late to start living the life you were meant to live.

READ THE FULL TRANSCRIPT

Welcome back to the Daily Mastermind. My name is George Wright III with your daily dose of inspiration, motivation, and education. I want to ask you a question. Have you had a bad day? Have you ever had a bad day? I mean, I guess that's a question that's an easy answer because we've all had bad days. But do you feel like you're having more bad days than good days lately? And the question that I have for you is when you have a bad day, when that happens, do you wish you were having a better day where everything was going right? Or do you learn to appreciate the value of having a bad day? Because I think it's really tough. Now, look, I know that sounds tough and it's probably easier said than done, but it's something that I want you to really think about for a minute. And I want you to think about it because I know that there's a lot of people lately that are struggling, that are having some difficult moments, having difficult days. I mean, I do as well. And what I'm trying to say is that we need to remind ourselves that our perspective, remember our thoughts create our life, but our perspective is what creates our life. Our perspective really is what creates our life because our thoughts and our filter on our thoughts are what drive our actions. And our actions based on our thoughts are going to create our results. So when you have a bad day, do you find a way to appreciate the value of a bad day so that you can either, number one, learn something, or number two, appreciate the good in your life. Let's break that down for a second because when you have struggle, the first thing you have to do is take a perspective that you're going to learn and grow from that struggle because without the struggles, you can't learn and grow. I saw a book one time that said, if life were hard, it wouldn't be easy. And I had to kind of do a double take on that. If life were hard, it wouldn't be easy. I'm thinking, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. if it were hard it wouldn't be easy if it were easy i'm sorry if life were easy it wouldn't be hard and it really makes sense because if life were easy and it were never hard how would you grow how would you learn how would you create that best life because you never had to create learning and growth and things that you need to really truly feel fulfilled i mean we talk about the need for certainty but we also talk about the human need for uncertainty for the change and the struggle. So I think it's important for us to analyze these bad days and change our filter and change our perspective. The other thing is that without the bad days, without the difficult times, it really is hard to appreciate the good days. And I'm saying that because I'm trying to give you a way to think about and reflect and deal with the bad days better. See, I was recently having a pretty bad day myself, and I heard a song that came on the radio. It was a song that sort of broke the pattern of me thinking, man, this day is just never going to end. I mean, it's one thing after another. And it was a song that brought some awareness to my day and helped me to sort of shift my focus and attention to the two things that I just mentioned to you. it shifted my attention to the fact that I'm going to learn and grow through these difficult, challenging things. And also, how are you ever going to appreciate the good days if you don't have a bad day? And so today I want to do something a little different. I've got this song. I kind of looked it up and I pulled the lyrics out. I want to read them to you because it really has a great, inspiring message. It's actually a song by Brantley Gilbert. I think it's called, If You Never Had a Bad Day, right? If you never had a bad day, what would happen? I'm going to read you these lyrics, I want you to just think about this for a minute and see if it just inspires you to get some different perspective on your bad days. It says, if you never had a bad day, you wouldn't never learn the words to Amazing Grace, never felt the chill of a pew when you lost faith. Well, blood, sweat, and tears wouldn't mean a thing if you didn't strike out a couple hundred times. If you never hit rock bottom, never cussed the sky, you would have never known to ask the good Lord why, or even changed your life, or ever changed your life. If you never had hard days, if you never had a heartbreak, never had more than you can take, or carried the weight of life on your shoulders, would you feel like you earned it? Would you live with purpose, or even know your own strength if you never had hard days? You wouldn't know what it's like to dance in the rain, never see the silver lining when the skies go gray You wouldn know a dream come true from a few that If you don you never find your way on a broken road If you never had hard days if you never had a heartbreak never had more than you can take or carry the weight of life on your shoulders, would you feel like you earned it? Would your life, would you live with a purpose or even know your own strength if you never had? If you never had the downs, the scuffs, the scars, the ruts, and all you put behind you when the winds, the ups, the rises above, are right there to remind you. If you never had hard days, if you never had a heartbreak, never had more than you can take or carry the weight of life on your shoulders, would it feel like you earned it? Would you live with a purpose or even know your own strength if you never had bad days, if you never had hard days? Yeah, if you never had hard days. So I hope that those things are words that song will inspire you and it'll help you to change your filter and your perspective on things. Let me suggest a few things that you can do in order to turn around your awareness or your bad days in general, or at least change your perspective. Number one, I would suggest when you're having a bad day, you surround yourself with positive. This means positive people, podcasts, music, books, whatever it is that you can do, inundate yourself with positive because that's going to allow you to change your perspective on your day, but it's also going to help change your mindset to the positive. Another suggestion I have for you is to practice gratitude. It's very, very difficult, I've learned from my experience, to count your blessings and still be focused on what's going wrong in your life. So find a way to write down things you're grateful for. Just make a list, as many things as you can think about. Your health, your opportunities, your family relationships, whatever it is. Push your mind into that path of gratitude. Remember, the neurons that fire together wire together, and you need to push yourself into gratitude. Another thing you can do, another suggestion, is to sit down and journal your thoughts. A lot of times we think about things and they build up inside of us. And that's why when you can have a great conversation with a friend or an individual, you feel like you can get it off your chest. It helps you to be able to release and just move forward. Writing down your thoughts in a journal, try it sometime. Just write down everything you're thinking. The advantage of that is that you get it off your mind you get it out on paper and then you can move on And it a great therapeutic way and that why a lot of people love to journal Journal isn just about capturing your memories or putting gratitude down Sometimes it's about getting those thoughts off your mind, the ones that got to get out of there. And finally, you know, find a mentor. Find a mentor that will allow you the opportunity to be able to bounce ideas, work on yourself, someone that helps to get to know you better, what you do, how you do it. And when you do that, I think it'll make a huge difference for you in your life. Now, actually, there is one other idea I have for you, and that's always be prepared in advance for those days. You know you're going to have them. You know you're going to have days that are going to be difficult. Prepare in advance for those days. Learn to find a way to be able to be prepared to deal with them. And that might be you've got a playlist that you like to listen to. It might be quotes or positive thoughts or a book. It might be calling a friend. Know in advance what you're going to do when you're having a difficult day, and it'll help you to get through it. Now, let me leave you with one last thought from the Daily Mastermind, and this is the quote of the day. I love the quote of the day in the Daily Mastermind mobile app. It's a free download. Make sure you go get it. But if I look at this like I do every morning, and I give you the quote of the day right out of the mobile app, what you're going to see is a great little 4K pick. It's going to be a great pick. you could share that or just use that to get your imagination and inspiration going. But the quote today is, turn rejections into opportunities. Turn rejections into opportunities. I think that fits really well with our thought here today. When you have difficult, challenging times, get out from under your circumstances. Turn them into opportunities. I hope this whole message today will get you to start to view your bad days differently and view them as something that's necessary and something you appreciate and something you're going to grow from and something that you're going to learn to change the filter on. Make it a game. Make it a game for yourself to change your perspective and win the day. You can win the day because you control your mind. You're not your mind and it's never too late to start living the life that you're meant to live. So let's start creating that life for you here today. Thanks for tuning in. I appreciate you listening. Look forward to your feedback. Once again, this was The Daily Mastermind and my name is George Wright III. Have an amazing day. Bye.

About the host
George Wright III, host of The Daily Mastermind

George Wright III

George Wright III is an entrepreneur, investor, and the host of The Daily Mastermind. Over more than two decades he has founded and scaled several multimillion-dollar companies and built a renowned seminar business that put some of the world's biggest names and brands on stage. With 25+ years across marketing, sales, and executive leadership, he's made a career of turning bold ideas into results — and momentum into lasting growth.

Today his mission is singular: empower driven entrepreneurs everywhere to master their mindset, unlock their potential, and live their ultimate destiny. Through The Daily Mastermind, George shares the Prosperity Principles and strategies that help people create massive change — in their business and in their life.

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