Former NFL player Howie Long once joked that there was only one “healthy” week in the football season: the first week! Right now, you may feel like a tackled football player—dinged up and bruised by plenty of losses or disappointments this year. You can still make the most of the time left on the calendar—you just need solutions. So, we’ll talk about four techniques you can use when hard days happen in the November series, Hack Your Day.
When you hear “hack your day,” you may think, Great—I want to avoid hard things! However, that’s going into denial, a mindset that never turns out well! Instead of ignoring your bad day, hack it by applying wisdom.
Wisdom is a combination of important qualities—knowledge, experience, and the ability to perceive, understand and adjust for what’s happening around you in real-time. When you merge those qualities, bad days are no longer the boss of you. You overcome obstacles by being insightful and strategic.
You might ooh and aah when you hear that pastry chef Erin McDowell has worked on 70 cookbooks, from recipe development to editing and food styling. But in a recent Instagram post, she described how she’s had plenty of hard shooting days and what she’s learned:
In the early days, I used to hate shooting, in part because it was so much work. It felt impossible to predict everything accurately while simultaneously completing the work to everyone’s satisfaction.
In time, I learned that with organized preparation—shoots could, in fact, go smoothly. I learned to be more flexible and roll with the punches. It fostered a new kind of creativity (how do you make something work even when it truly isn’t working!) Now, I adore shoots the most because it’s when the book starts to come to life!
I love, love, LOVE the process of making books. It’s good to take a moment to type that sentence because at the stage I’m currently in, I’m stressed and tired, and it’s easy to forget that fact. I write recipes + cookbooks because I truly want to share the things I’ve learned with anyone who wants to learn them!
I don’t know about you, but when I hear someone else say, “I’m stressed and tired!” I think, girrrrl, me too! But that’s where most of us get stuck. By contrast, did you catch the part where Erin had the insight to use the soft skill of creativity? Her approach has changed from feeling stuck to thinking, I know I can make this shoot a success. How do I do that?
Here are three ways you can make Erin’s outlook personal:
The world may dish out less-than-perfect circumstances this week. But
use that day wisely—it’s a chance to foster a new kind of creativity.