Bad Quarter?

Have you ever had one of those days where it feels like one thing after another just keeps going wrong? You start the morning great, everything seems to be moving along just fine, and then somewhere in the middle of the day, things start to unravel. Not one giant catastrophe, just a ridiculous collection of little things that seem to pile on top of each other until you're sitting there thinking, "Seriously? What is happening today?" That was me recently.

It started at Costco. If you've ever been to Costco on a particularly chaotic day, you know there is already a certain amount of strategy involved in navigating your way through that place. I finally battled my way through the crowds, found what I needed, made it to the checkout, and then discovered they didn't take the credit card I had with me. So I had to go get a different card, recheck my groceries, stand in line to escape again, and finally get myself out of there. The problem was, I was meeting someone at my house at a certain time, so now I was running late and feeling rushed. I get in my car and discover that my favorite pair of sunglasses had broken. Great. Then there was the rotisserie chicken. I had bought one at Costco, and apparently it decided to spend the entire 45-minute drive home slowly leaking chicken juice all over my trunk. I like to keep my car meticulously clean, so that was a particularly enjoyable surprise when I got home.

I eventually got through everything I needed to do, and I finally sat down, ready to tackle some major projects that I had been trying to build up enough momentum to start. I jumped right in, and about twenty minutes into it, I started rubbing my eyes. My contact then somehow managed to suck itself up behind my eye and fold itself into an origami nightmare in the process, and I had absolutely no idea how to get it out. So, naturally, I began researching how to retrieve a contact lens from the depths of your eyeball. What followed was about thirty minutes of anxiety, frustration, and what I can only describe as my own little Pinterest-fail eye surgery. Eventually, I got it out, but by that point, I was over it. I was tired, frustrated, and ready to call the day a complete loss.

So I decided to go for a walk.

Walking is one of those things that helps me calm down and get my head back in the right place, and it did exactly that. As I walked, I started noticing the things around me. Dragonflies were dancing around. Squirrels were chattering. The evening was peaceful, and little by little, I started coming out of the frustrated headspace I had been sitting in. I began reflecting on the fact that I hadn't actually had a bad day. I had had a bad chunk of the day.

A very wise person once told me to look at your day like a football game. A football game is divided into four quarters, and you can have a terrible first quarter without having a terrible game. You can have a rough second quarter and still come back. You can have a third quarter that feels like an absolute disaster and still completely change the direction of the game in the fourth. The quarter matters, but it doesn't determine the entire game. That is such a simple way of looking at things, but I think it is incredibly important because of how easily we can allow one difficult portion of our day to color everything else.

Something frustrating happens in the morning and suddenly we decide we're having a terrible day. We have a difficult conversation and suddenly we're convinced everything is falling apart. We have a bad week and start telling ourselves that nothing is going right. We go through a difficult season and begin making decisions and forming beliefs as though that season is going to last forever. We take something temporary and start treating it like a permanent reality.

That's where we have to be careful. Temporary circumstances have a way of becoming permanent attitudes if we aren't paying attention. A disappointing experience can turn into bitterness. A bad relationship can make us decide that people can't be trusted. One rejection can make us stop putting ourselves out there. A financial setback can make us start believing there will never be enough. One mistake can convince us that we aren't capable. A difficult season can make us believe that our entire life is difficult. Before we know it, something that happened to us has started changing what we believe about ourselves, about other people, and about what is possible for our future.

I'm not saying we should pretend the bad quarter didn't happen. Sometimes it was genuinely bad. Sometimes you really are frustrated, disappointed, hurt, angry, exhausted, or overwhelmed. We don't have to slap a positive attitude on everything and pretend life is wonderful when it isn't. If the quarter was bad, call it bad. Acknowledge it. Feel what you need to feel. Learn what you need to learn. But then remember that it was a quarter, not the entire game.

There is a big difference between saying, "That was a really hard experience," and deciding, "My life is hard." There is a difference between saying, "That person hurt me," and deciding, "People can't be trusted." There is a difference between saying, "This season is difficult," and deciding, "This is how my life is going to be." The first statements acknowledge reality. The second ones turn a temporary circumstance into an identity or a prediction about the future.

And we do this more often than we realize. Our minds like to create conclusions because conclusions feel safer than uncertainty. If something went badly, we want to figure out why so it doesn't happen again. Sometimes that means we create a story that is much bigger than the actual circumstance. One bad experience becomes "this always happens to me." One difficult person becomes "everyone is like this." One setback becomes "I can't do this." One bad quarter becomes "I'm having a terrible day."

But what if we started giving ourselves permission to let a bad quarter simply be a bad quarter?

What if you could have a frustrating morning and still expect a good afternoon? What if you could experience a difficult week without deciding that the next week will be the same? What if you could walk through a difficult season without allowing it to determine what you believe about the seasons that haven't even happened yet?

That doesn't mean you have control over what happens next. You don't. Life is going to throw things at us that we didn't plan for, didn't expect, and certainly didn't ask for. Sometimes you will do everything right and still have a lousy quarter. Sometimes you will have a day where it feels like you are just getting knocked around from one thing to the next. And sometimes, honestly, you may have four bad quarters. That's life. We are human, and hard things happen.

But even when you can't control the circumstances, you can pay attention to what those circumstances are doing inside of you. You can decide whether you're going to let a frustrating experience change the way you see everything else. You can notice when your thoughts start moving from "this is hard" to "everything is hard." You can catch yourself when disappointment starts turning into hopelessness or frustration starts turning into bitterness. You can remind yourself that what is happening right now is not necessarily what will always be happening.

That was the shift I needed. My circumstances hadn't changed. My sunglasses were still broken. My trunk had still been baptized in rotisserie chicken juice. My contact lens had still attempted a residency in the back of my eyeball. None of that suddenly became less annoying. But my perspective changed. I recognized I had actually had a pretty good day surrounding one really frustrating stretch of it. I had things to be thankful for. I had people I enjoyed spending time with. I had projects I was excited about. I had a peaceful evening ahead of me.

The fourth quarter was actually looking pretty good.

This is a reminder we all need. Don't let one bad quarter convince you that you had a bad game. Don't let one difficult season convince you that you have a difficult life. Don't let a temporary circumstance make permanent decisions about your attitude, your beliefs, your relationships, your future, or what you think is possible for you.

Tomorrow is another game, and you get four new quarters.