My son handed my own words back to me without even knowing he was doing it. Here’s the lesson, for parenting and for business.
I picked my boys up from summer camp today. My oldest was volunteering, my youngest was a camper. They’ve gone to this camp for years, Jon actually went as a little kid, so it’s practically ancient, but we love it and we volunteer there whenever we can.
So we pile in the car and they’re jabbering nonstop, and I let them, because they’re a teenager and an almost-eleven-year-old and I will never shut down a boy who actually wants to talk to his mom. Hayden was doing most of the talking. I asked how camp went, and he was telling me how some of the little kids had a couple of meltdowns, upset about this or that, and how he sat down and talked them through it.
And he’s just rambling. Not making a point, not trying to impress me, just telling the story. And he goes, “Yeah, they were really complaining, saying it was such a bad day. And I was like, is it a bad day, or is it a bad five minutes?”
And then he just kept going with his story.
He didn’t even know what he’d just done
That’s the part that got me. He didn’t pause. He didn’t look over to see if I caught it. He wasn’t performing it for me. He just said it, the way you say something you actually believe, and moved right along, while I sat in the driver’s seat quietly losing it.
Because “is it a bad day or a bad five minutes” is something I have said to those boys a million times. So many times I was sure they’d started tuning me out. And here was my kid, mentoring some rough elementary schooler he’d just met, pulling my exact words out of his own mouth, unprompted, like they were his.
That’s the difference between a kid who memorized a line and a kid who became it. You say something for years and you have no idea if it’s landing. And then one day it just falls out of them, for someone else, when they don’t think anyone’s grading them. That’s the moment you find out it went in.
Most days I feel like I’m failing at this parenting thing, there’s never enough time, there’s always more I should be doing. And then something like this happens and it melts me. It felt like winning at something for once.
Same lesson, different room
Here’s where it comes back to business, and I’ll keep it light because the story carries it.
How many times do we let a bad five minutes ruin a whole day? A three-star instead of a four. One upset client. One tech who talked back. One thing that went sideways in the office. And suddenly you’re driving home going, “today was terrible.”
And here’s the trap: your brain believes whatever you tell it. It has no choice. So the second you decide it was a bad day, your brain goes hunting for evidence to prove you right. Oh yeah, and we ran that red light. And that email. And that. It stacks up the negative because you told it to.
I’m not talking about toxic positivity, where you have to find a silver lining in genuinely awful things. Some days are truly hard and I won’t pretend otherwise. But if it was really just a bad five minutes, do you want to hand it the other twelve hours?
I actually told this story to my team today, because we all do this. That client gave us a three instead of a four and it stings, but a three is still good. We aim for fours, always, but one three is not a ruined day. It’s five minutes.
How you walk it back
The trick, the same one I use on the boys, is to make your brain go find the good on purpose.
When Hudson insists he had a bad day, I don’t argue. I ask. “So nothing good happened at all today? No good news?” “It was a bad day.” “Okay. You didn’t wake up at Mammaw’s because you got to spend the night with her? She didn’t drive you to school and make you a good breakfast? You didn’t see a single one of your friends or get to play with them all day?” “…well, yeah.” “So was it a bad day, or a bad five minutes?”
And by the end, every time, it’s “it was a bad five minutes, and Mom’s right.” (He loves admitting that last part, obviously.)
You can do the exact same thing at your office. Something goes wrong, and before you let it swallow the day, walk yourself back through the evidence. Most of the clients were happy. Most of the day worked. The bad thing was real, but it was small, and it doesn’t get to own the rest.
So next time something goes sideways, don’t reach for “today is ruined.” Ask yourself the question I ask my kids: was it a bad day, or a bad five minutes? And then go count the good. It’s there. I promise. Even if it’s the silly little stuff.
You don’t always get to see whether the thing you keep repeating is landing. Every once in a while, on a car ride home from camp, you do.