The most important and impactful thing you can do for your own life is to “own your experience.” It’s easy to get distracted by what other people are doing, what other people have, the possibility of what could be, should be, or should have been. We get worried about the future and remain discouraged about our past.

What matters is taking responsibility for your experiences right now.

We often talk about the “best day ever” as a mental framework for what happens when things don’t go well instead of what you might assume (from the overly positive connotation that phrase holds). It frames our choice to make the next best decision, to own our experience in the present moment, and to move forward in a better direction.

We are Live Better, not “Live Perfect.” An upgraded level of mental control when your experience is not good creates a positive shift in momentum to change the direction of the tide.

The easiest anecdote to display this kind of thinking is to consider a time when someone said something to you or directed an action towards you that made you feel poorly. How long did you let that comment or action bother you? Did 10 seconds of a stranger’s day take up your attention and focus for a full day? Did it affect you into the next day or the next time you found yourself in a similar situation?

Children, however, don’t get this choice, and you can see their behavior change the next time they find themselves in a similar situation. Sometimes, this is good (e.g. a child touches a hot stove and gets burned…won’t happen again). Usually, this isn’t good (e.g. parent lashes out at their child because they are emotional overwhelmed for something that isn’t the child’s fault and then the child feels guilty “playing” or performing this action again). Those patterns aren’t as black and white as we think; they often fill space in our behavior well into adulthood. We let things bother us because we don’t own our experience – we let someone else dictate it for us.

Here are three simple (but not easy) strategies to take to work towards a better mindset:

Change your attitude

Immediately reframe your attitude to positive. How can you sidestep the immediate knee-jerk reaction and consider why you feel “wronged” in the current moment? Does the person who “wronged” you deserve the benefit of the doubt? Can you chalk it up to something they have going on in their life instead of taking it personally and internalizing those emotions? If you have something more important to do or to think about, go there. Saying out loud (to yourself), “I don’t have time to waste on [X], carry on!” is a great way to push past a negative experience. If you can’t immediately change your mental state, change your physical state. Training hard or going for a run is a great way to get a new attitude.

Make the next best decision

When we don’t own our experience, we make poor decisions. We make decisions out of regret, anger, etc, which is done with clouded judgement. The next decision determines the path you take; emotional reactions exist for a reason (protection, action, etc), but you can choose the path you take. Practicing mindfulness techniques can help to create a more thoughtful gap between action and reaction. Can you control yourself enough to slow down and reconsider the next best decision? Just think back to your last heated conversation – could you have used a cooling off period?

Seek help

We can’t do it alone. It’s that simple. This might never be truer than it is right now. We are stressed, overwhelmed, confused, anxious, over-stimulated, and currently without “normal” social connection. We need help, and it’s okay to ask for professional help. Private coaching, counselors, community advisors, therapists, and trustworthy peers and mentors are a lifeline when we simply can’t make the next best decision or change our attitude ourselves. We need objective, outside counsel, and this is a great strategy.

The key takeaway from this blog post is this:

“Own your experience.” Take the good with the bad and create more good than bad when you have the choice. When you can’t make the right choice on your own, look outside yourself. The fastest way to get clear is to change your attitude, which you can do by changing your physical state. Make the best, next choice, and own the outcome.

This will lead to more “best day ever’s” than you ever thought possible.

By: Jason Loebig