Sometimes heading up a business can be rough stuff.   Things will not always go as planned, customers may be demanding and vendors may be unreasonable or uncooperative.   While you are the head of the company, you are a human being after it is all said and done.  Given the preceding statement, us humans have emotions and sometimes that will lead you to have a bad day.

But just what do you do when you’re having a not-so-stellar day?  Well, this is the hard part of running any and all businesses – dealing with the “inner game” that goes on in your head.  What exactly is the “inner game” you may ask?  Well, it consist of all the thought processes that regulate what we do with our time, how we respond to situations and the internal programming that guides how we think about our world and our place in it.  When you are having a bad day, this is how the inner game might play out:

Something goes wrong and threatens either the success of a particular task or worse your entire business.  You start to dwell on what is going wrong and as a result, you begin to miss opportunities to correct the situation.  As things compound on one another, your spirits begin to slide and you lose hope.  This feeling begins to permeate your attitude, which others will no doubt pick up on.  From there you may find yourself feeling as if “nothing is going right” and things are simply going from bad to worse.

The major take away from the above scenario is that the Law of Attraction works on all of us, whether we are consciously utilizing it or not. The Law of Attraction basically says that you attract into your life that which you think about most.  Thus, whatever you spend most of your time thinking about is most likely the thing you’re taking the most action on.

So then, how do you fix a bad day as a CEO?

Have a pity party for 2 mins and then move on!  Yes, you are a human.  But “crying over spilled milk” isn’t going to fix the situation.  At some point, you simply need to tell yourself that this is the situation you are dealing with and you need to work on fixing it.

Reaffirm what you do well.  Bad days will usually make you doubt yourself.  What did I do wrong?  Why didn’t we win that sale?  How much longer can we survive?  However, the key to reversing these feelings is to remind yourself that you are in fact good at something and this is just a setback.

Acknowledge what is out of your control.  We as humans like to control things – it’s in our nature. But the reality is that a good portion of our lives are not within our control.  To fix a bad day, let go of what you have no control over (like that truck that crashed into your storefront) and focus on what you can fix.

Focus on what you can do.  In every situation there are things that you can do to “right the ship” and get you back on track.  If that means going out and drumming up business, visiting clients, firing that headache employee or just taking a quick break to clear your mind, identify what you CAN control.

Act on what you can.  Nothing is going to fix itself and no one is going to help you.  Being a CEO is a lonely job.  At the end of the day, you are responsible for everything that happens in your company (good and bad).  But sitting around waiting for the situation to get better is not the answer.  So get up, dust yourself off and get to work.  Remember, whatever you spend most of your time thinking about is most likely the thing you’re taking the most action on.  So start thinking/acting on how to make tomorrow a good day!