Episode 426 · Aug 31, 2021

How to Get Through a Tough Day

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Everyone hits a wall sometimes. You wake up not wanting to move, drag yourself through your morning, and spend most of the day feeling like you are running on empty. George Wright III, host of The Daily Mastermind, has dedicated an entire episode to this exact experience, offering a practical framework you can use the next time a tough day tries to derail you.

His message is direct: it is not the absence of bad days that separates successful people from everyone else. It is how they choose to respond when those days arrive.

Why Bad Days Are Part of Every Journey

George opens with an honest admission. During a morning workout, his whole body ached from a week of hard training, and he did not want to be there. Rather than walk out, he stopped and reminded himself of something worth repeating:

"90% of success is just showing up."

That one idea reframes everything. You do not have to perform perfectly on a hard day. You just have to show up. Recognizing that you made it to the mat, the desk, or the meeting is itself a win worth acknowledging.

How Structure Protects You From Your Own Mood

One of the most useful concepts in this episode is the difference between structure and routine. Routines are flexible. Structure is not. George describes structure as the commitments, barriers, and systems that make it genuinely difficult to opt out of the things you know you need to do.

Think about how reliably most people show up for work regardless of how they feel. That consistency exists because an external structure demands it. The goal is to build the same kind of structure for your own priorities, not just the ones someone else sets for you.

Scheduling is the most direct form of structure. When your workout, your deep work block, or your family time is already on the calendar, your mood becomes far less relevant. You are not deciding in the moment whether to do it. The decision was already made.

Why Appointments Change the Game

George takes scheduling one step further by recommending that you set appointments with other people wherever possible. A training session with a coach, a Zoom call with a colleague, or a commitment to a friend creates social accountability on top of calendar accountability.

"When you have appointments in your schedule, it's going to keep you structured."

This is not about staying busy. It is about staying consistent. Busyness without intention burns you out. Consistency built around your real priorities compounds over time.

George also points out that recovery belongs on the schedule just as much as work does. Time for hiking, family dinners, or simply resting are not rewards you earn after everything else is done. They are essential inputs that keep you functional. If you wait until you feel like planning them, they often never happen.

How Accountability Keeps You Moving

Human nature tends to avoid discomfort. Accountability works against that tendency by adding a cost to inaction. George encourages you to find both internal and external forms of accountability: tracking your own progress, making commitments to people you respect, and setting up regular check-ins or reports.

You do not necessarily need someone to manage you. Sometimes simply telling a friend or partner that you will send them a brief weekly update is enough. The act of reporting creates a mild but consistent pressure that keeps you honest with yourself.

What Non-Negotiables Do for Your Consistency

The final strategy George shares is the one with perhaps the most leverage: identifying a small number of non-negotiables. These are the commitments you keep regardless of your mood, energy level, or circumstances.

For George, a morning workout is non-negotiable because it sets the tone for everything else:

"I know that if I work out in the morning, so many other things go right, from my energy to my day to my ideas to my thoughts."

He points to Gary Keller's concept from The One Thing: what is the single domino that, if knocked down, causes all the others to fall? Find that domino and protect it above everything else. It might be a morning gratitude practice, a specific meeting, a creative work block, or physical movement. Whatever it is, make it untouchable.

How to Break the Cycle When You Are Already Stuck

Sometimes you do not catch the drift before it starts. You are already three days into a low-energy slump before you realize it. George's advice here is equally practical: every day is a clean slate, and every moment inside that day is a chance to start fresh.

You do not have to wait for tomorrow or for next Monday. The turning point is a decision, and that decision is available right now. Keep a few tools ready for when the cycle sets in: a song that reliably shifts your energy, a photo of your family or a goal, a short ritual that signals a reset. Have them waiting so you do not have to search for them when you need them most.

Action Steps

Build structure by putting your top priorities into your calendar before the week begins, not after.
Schedule appointments with other people for the commitments most likely to slip when you are not feeling motivated.
Choose at least one non-negotiable, the single habit or action that, if done consistently, makes everything else more likely to happen.
Set up a simple accountability loop: a weekly update to a friend, a partner, or even a shared note you keep yourself.
Identify your reset tools in advance so you have them ready when a tough day arrives.

Bad days are not a sign that something has gone wrong with you or your path. They are part of every life worth building. As George Wright III puts it, it is never too late to start living the life you were meant to live. The strategies you put in place today are what carry you through the days when nothing feels easy.

READ THE FULL TRANSCRIPT

All right. I'm so glad to be here with you today. I hope you're having an amazing morning. Today, I want to talk with you on our podcast about how to get through a tough day, maybe some strategies and things that can help you. But I wanted to just do a quick reminder, if you haven't joined us before, come join us on our mid-morning, mid-week mastermind on the Facebook, Daily Mastermind Facebook page. We're going to be live and I'm looking forward to sharing some insight and some responses to some key questions that people in the community have had. So with that said, let's jump right into it. Have a great day. Welcome back to the Daily Mastermind. My name is George Wright III and I hope you're having an amazing week. I had a quote of the day yesterday I wanted to bring out and that was by Ogmandino and his quote is, life is a game. I find myself so much lately trying to find more and more ways to make life a game and see it as a game and play it as a game. In order to really be able to create more fulfillment results and success in my life, I hope you're trying to do the same. And then today, the Daily Mastermind quote of the day is, do not tie your earnings to the number of hours you work. I think that's a great piece of advice because I think so many of us want more and more out of life, but we still treat life like it's a job. And we punch a clock. And what we need to realize is that in order to follow our passions and do things we need to do, we need to stop punching a clock and doing the time in our head or keeping track of time on a time card and just start to live and breathe and build our life and our business and our relationships around what's most important and just set our priorities rather than trying to look for the end of our day or the end of the time that we have to spend on things. So anyway, what I wanted to do today is I wanted to talk to you a little bit about how to get through a tough day. When was the last time you had a really bad day? You know what I mean? The kind of day where you hit your snooze bar on your alarm or your phone a bunch of times. Let's say maybe so many times you can't remember. Or you just know you're going to wake up the next morning and you've got to set two alarms because the first one's not going to wake you up. or you're going through life and you're going through your day and you just don't feel like doing anything. You don't feel like giving it your all. You don't feel like playing it 100%. You don't feel like moving forward. And yet you feel and you know what you need to do and you feel like you're going to regret that the next day or you feel like you're leaving things hanging. And then you start to cycle into these times where you just start to get stuck in your head and you're really not making results happen. Well, look, I've had those days. We've all had those days. We definitely all have those days. In fact, I was at the gym today, and I was thinking to myself, man, I do not want to be here. My whole body hurts from working out the last week at a whole other level with my trainer, and I just didn't feel like doing it, and every single set and every rep was kind of a struggle, and I had to stop for a minute, and I had to think about it, and I had to remind myself, like the quote that you hear a lot of 90% of success is just showing up. And so you have to start by taking the pressure off yourself and acknowledging that you showed up. Recognize and appreciate that Be grateful that you doing what you doing And if you not doing it recognize that you have the opportunity to turn that around at any given moment The problem is we cycle into these modes where more and more time goes by and we do less and less and then we start to get hard on ourselves and it makes it harder, really in our minds, to turn things around. So I know that we all have these types of days, but you know, it's how you respond to these days and it's how you respond to the difficult situations that's really going to define you as a person and your degree and amount of success and happiness that you're going to have in your life. So today what I wanted to do is I just wanted to give you a few little things that I've done or things that you can use, maybe jog your memory, give you some inspiration on how to get out of these traps that we get stuck in, the cycles. You know, the I'm trapped inside my head or I don't feel like doing this kind of days. I want to really just give you a few ideas and get you thinking because awareness and finding ways and solutions is the key, right? So prosperity pillar number three says I act in spite of my mood. And I just wanted to start with that because there is a reason that this pillar exists. There's a reason that this happens because successful people act in spite of their mood. It's not that you don't have bad days. Everybody has bad days. It's just that they choose to act regardless of their mood. They choose to act anyway. They choose to do something anyway and even though it's difficult, more importantly, they find ways to be able to make that happen. So I know it's easier said than done and I want to discuss with you kind of some ideas on how you can start to have, maybe eliminate those bad days or reduce the number, have more good days than bad days and or maybe just deal with the bad days when you have them. So there's a couple things that I recommend. Number one, structure. Structure and there's a big difference between daily routines or daily rituals and structure. I'm talking about things, boundaries, barriers, and things that are in place that are going to push you through and eliminate the ability you have to get stuck and fall behind. Because most of us settle for structures from outside ourselves. Let's be honest. I mean, if you don't feel like going to work, you usually go to work anyway. You know, people outside of us put structure on us all the time like a job. you know we will go to work whether we want to go or not right you'll get up and go whether you want to go or not because you have to and you can tell yourself that you do that as a choice but really it's other people putting structure on our lives and we're willing to do it at that point but why don't we do that when it's for ourselves well we need to find ways to set our own structure on ourselves so things like scheduling workouts or having meetings in your calendar or setting up routines or making commitments to other people. When you do all these types of things, you're creating structure that doesn't really make it easy. That's the point. You don't want to make it easy on yourself to be able to opt out of things that you know you need to do. So by creating structure and commitments and schedule and things like that, it'll make it harder for you to fall out of sync. And my next suggestion is schedule. That is really the best example of structure. See, when you wake up and start your day or you get home from work or whatever you're doing and you don already have things scheduled well then you fall prey to what your mood is And you don want to be prey to what your mood or your mind is at the point in time When you set your goals and structure in life and the things you want to accomplish the milestones you want to put as much into your schedule as possible It's not about staying busy. It's about staying consistent. So whether it's scheduling calls or a Zoom or a meeting or time with your family or time to build relationship or time to work on your passion or your talent, Schedule it out. Because when it's scheduled, it's much more difficult to be able to decide that you're not in the mood to do what you need to do. Another example of ways you can do this is set appointments. Set appointments with a trainer or with a friend or with a colleague or a partner or people at work. When you have appointments in your schedule, it's going to keep you structured. The other thing is you should schedule all areas of your life. Business, family, lifestyle. Just like a job would. Some of us, we don't even make enough time for ourselves to recuperate or create memories or lifestyle. Schedule in those times to be able to go do fun stuff, do hikes, do time with your family, do stuff with friends, create memories. Schedule those out because most of us, when we wait around to the last minute, we don't get it done. And you have to schedule your recovery as much as you do your stress and business and priorities. You've got to schedule recovery time as well. That's very, very important. Another thing that I would recommend is accountability. This is one that we all know human nature fights against things that are going to give us pain and stress and pressure and that are going to stretch us outside our comfort zone. So we need accountability in order to survive and thrive, in order to really push us. So you can look for ways to find internal accountability or external accountability. Find ways to hold yourself to the fire, hold yourself to the commitments that you made and things like that. Ask for help from other people. Get support from friends, family, colleagues, business relationships, mentors. Create those milestones. Because the other important thing about accountability is you've got to be able to measure, you've got to be able to track, and you've got to be able to report all areas of your life. Are you making progress? Sometimes reporting is the simplest way to create accountability. You may not have someone holding you accountable, but if you tell them that you want to be able to send them a daily report or give them an update or communicate once a week or set up a mastermind that you meet once every week or a couple weeks or even a month, that accountability will go a long ways for you. And then finally, the last thing I wanted to suggest is you've got to find and create and set a few non-negotiables in your life. And what I mean by that, these are things that no matter what have to get done. These are things that you make the decision and the commitment that no matter what, these are going to happen. No matter how you feel, no matter how bad your mood is, no matter what kind of cycle you're in, you will not miss this up. And these might be things that you value. So it's going to be areas that are priorities for you, like your health or your relationships or your business or people. Find a couple, at least have a couple of non-negotiables in your life because those are the things that are going to carry you through. Health and fitness is one of mine. I know that if I work out in the morning, so many other things go right So many other things from my energy to my day to my ideas to my thoughts And so a workout in the morning is something that a non for me Determine what you'll find that like Gary Keller writes in his book, The One Thing. What's the big domino? What's the one thing you can do in your life that if you do this will knock down all the other dominoes? What's that one thing? And make that your non-negotiable. if it's getting up a certain time, if it's meeting with a certain person, if it's having some accountability, if it's working out. What is that one domino? It might be getting up and doing gratitude or having a journal. What's the one big domino you can use to knock down all the rest of them in your life and make that a non-negotiable? Now I want you to remember a couple of key things and the key things that I want you to remember is that every single day is a clean slate. Don't get wrapped up in the past no matter whether you had a couple of bad days or a whole week of bad days this last week. Every day is a clean slate. You've got to look at it that way in order to really capitalize on it. And second, every moment in your life is an opportunity to create a fresh start. You might have been having the worst day in the world and the moment that you recognize that and you choose because the key, the turning point in your day, in your life is the decision and it's basically a choice. It's your choice. You can choose to start fresh from this moment on. Learn to do that. Learn to minimize the number of bad days or recognize them when they happen. Come up with some strategies that work for you, whatever it is that really motivates and inspires you the most. And then learn to break the cycle when you do recognize and get those bad days. Have a few tools at your disposal. It might be a really positive song. It might be good pictures. It might be pictures of your family or your goals or your vision. Whatever it is that you know will help break you out of that cycle, have those ready. Be prepared. and then find a way to push through and recognize and be grateful for the efforts and the awareness and the commitment to growing that you have. When you recognize and acknowledge that, it'll go a long way for you. So that's my message for today. Create some non-negotiables. Find some schedule. Find some structure. Find some accountability. And you're going to be able to turn a tough day or a bad day into an amazing day. And I know you can do it. And I hope you have an amazing weekend. Look forward to talking with you next week. Once again, this is George Wright III, and this has been The Daily Mastermind. We'll talk to you soon. Today's podcast was brought to you by Protect Wealth Academy and the three-day asset protection and wealth creation summit. I've worked with Protect Wealth for over two decades, and they are by far the longest-running wealth creation and asset protection event in the nation. So if you're interested in creating double-digit returns, you want to significantly lower your taxes or just protect yourself from lawsuits, or judgments, then you definitely want to check out their event. It's an unbelievable collection of, you know, America's greatest attorneys, trainers, experts, all totally live over three days. And it's worth thousands of dollars, but I've arranged for you and any of the members of our mastermind community to attend the entire event, all three days, absolutely free. You just need to go to the show notes. I'll put a link in there for you to claim your two free tickets. And there's only a couple of these per year and they sell out quickly. So go grab two tickets to the next event take advantage of the offer. And remember, it takes a lifetime to accumulate wealth, but just a few days to protect it if you do things right. Anyway, have an amazing day, and I'm glad this could be something of value for you.