Friday sucked.

So I made the most of it.

Today I’m going to show you how.

We all have bad days. Sometimes it’s within our control, sometimes it’s not.

But how we respond is always within our control.

As Viktor Frankl says: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

So Friday sucked. I’m not going to go into details on why that was, or what happened — it’s not that important — but what is important is how I responded, and how you can do it too the next time something shitty happens in your life.

It involves four simple steps.

The first was shifting my priority to survival. I needed to survive the day. That was it. To survive the day, survive the next hour. Whatever it takes. Healing and recovery happens one day at a time, so when it’s the hardest, survive the day. Tomorrow is a new day, and a good night’s rest can work like magic.

Next, I committed to meeting myself with immense patience. My emotions were high, and that left for some awkward moments, but I was kind to myself. This wasn’t a time to beat myself up, it was a time to allow myself to process the experience, whatever it was.

So often when we’re experiencing heightened levels of emotion we sit there judging ourselves for feeling the way we do. In the paragraph above, I went to write “embarrassing” moments, but that was coming from a place of me judging myself for the situations I found myself in. By judging ourselves we only make the situation worse! Accept what is in this moment. What you resist, persists.

The third step is really important. I call it sending out the bat signal. Normally when a situation like this happens, I would isolate and keep it all to myself. I would hide from my friends and the world around me.

I wouldn’t want people to see what I was going through… or I would be afraid that they would judge me.

Well… that hasn’t worked so well in the past, and I know that isolating myself leads to my experience becoming worse, not better. So I sent out my bat signal, which really means texting a few friends I trust and rely on to be a support system in times like these.

Two friends called me right away, and letting those in my life know what’s happening in my life allowed them to support me, and allowed me to know I wasn’t alone.

The final step was to follow my highest excitement in the moment. We talked about this idea in episode 5 of the podcast with Adam Roa, but following your inspiration and finding flow helps a lot, especially when times are tough.

I had two flights to catch, so I spent both of them watching House of Cards. When I landed back in San Diego, I showered and went for tacos. I watched the NBA Finals game, talked on the phone with a friend, and spent time with my roommate.

I wasn’t concerned about “being productive”… my definition of productivity on Friday was whatever felt most exciting in the moment.

Now let me state quickly… following your highest excitement in the moment may lead you to justify an unhealthy habit you have.

So here’s your disclaimer:

The purpose of “following your highest excitement in the moment” is about finding flow. It’s about finding inspiration that brings value to your life.

It’s not about just checking out, escaping, numbing, or avoiding what’s happening. It’s not about putting your energy into something that causes self-destruction.

So I chose House of Cards, not League of Legends. And I’d encourage you to do it as well. Saturday morning I woke up, and went to the gym. Yesterday I hung out with my friends Adam and Azrya all day. Today I woke up, and went surfing.

Are you following me on Instagram?

Find the environments in your life (the activities and people) that bring value, instead of the opposite.

To survive a bad day, shift your priority, meet yourself with immense patience, send your “bat signal”, and find your highest excitement in the moment. By creating a container of self-care and leaning on those around you, you can overcome anything.

All of this would not be possible if..

.. I wasn’t able to recognize what was happening on Friday, especially when it came to identifying my emotions and the fact that they were “higher” than usual.

Awareness creates choice. By identifying what was happening on Friday, in the moment, it became possible for me to make empowered decisions, instead of ones that would leave me in a worse place a few days later.

So how can you do this too?

The key is to improve your emotional intelligence. We all have emotions, and they come and go like the waves of the ocean. But learning to navigate them is essential for success in your life.

The journey you have been on to quit gaming, or another unhealthy habit in your life is a catalyst for you to grow in your understanding of your emotions. By becoming aware of what your emotions are — without judging them — you now have the power to choose your response.

Are you going to numb yourself by smoking pot? Escape by playing video games? Avoid by isolating yourself? Suppress by watching porn?

Or are you going to transition them into something that drives your motivation. That inspires action. And increases your capacity to empathize with the world around you?

A lot of our “bad habits” are unconscious patterns we’re living in. So we experience an emotion (that we’re not aware of), and that triggers a specific behavior we’ve been conditioned (or conditioned ourselves) into making. And all of this might be happening on autopilot… without us even being aware of it!

The choice is yours.