Never Have a Bad Day (Even When You Do)

What does a “bad day” really mean? In this  solo episode, I break through the illusion that even mindset coaches don't ever have a 'bad day'.

I share with you how one simple unprepared moment almost sent me into a negative spiral and how I was able to catch myself before I let it get out of control (too far). 

This is not an episode about never feeling off—it’s about not staying stuck when you do.

🧠 In this episode, you’ll learn:

• What I say to myself when I start to feel things going sideways—and why it works
• The real story of a project gone sideways and how lack of prep triggered a cascade of frustration
• Why it’s crucial to name the feeling and stop lying to yourself about what a “bad day” really is
• How you can break the loop—and keep a tough hour from hijacking your entire week

Whether you’re a business owner, a parent, or a human just trying to keep it together, this episode will remind you: you don’t have to be perfect—you just have to be honest.

Want to connect with me directly? You can find me on all the socials @TheRealJamesDunn. I'd love to hear from you!

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https://www.youtube.com/@TheRealJamesDunn

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Transcript

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James Dunn: Hello! Hello! And welcome back to this show. I am James Dunn. I am your host, as always. Hope that you're having a fantastic day, fantastic week, fantastic month, and an incredible year. And if you're not, that's okay, because that's actually a little bit about what we're going to be talking about today.

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James Dunn: You know, I think, what people may misinterpret about me the most is believing, you know, knowing that I'm a mindset coach, and believing that I just never have a bad day, that I never have a bad moment, that I never get upset, that I never freak out or anything like that, because, as a mindset coach, you're supposed to have all that under control all the time. Right?

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James Dunn: No sorry. I hate to burst your bubble, but even as a mindset coach. Somebody who focuses on this constantly. I still have moments to challenge me that push me to the edge, push me to the brink of wondering what the fuck this shit's all about. And so what I want to do today is really kind of dive into that a little bit dive into that whole idea of having a bad day, and what to do about it. Share some tips with you that I myself use to never truly have a bad day.

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James Dunn: And I'll explain that a little bit more here in just a second, but definitely. Not a bad week, bad month, bad year.

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James Dunn: What I mean by the fact of I never have a bad day is I recognize that

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James Dunn: to have a bad day I have to make it intentionally a bad day. I have to really focus on something negative over and over and over and over again.

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James Dunn: So when you say you're having a bad day like, there's a little bit little piece of me that felt like I was having a bad day yesterday, but as I reflected on it, I could see that it was only a bad couple of hours, if even that long that I had. And maybe this is what you've run into in the past before is, you're telling yourself, man, I'm having a bad day.

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James Dunn: But what it is is you're focusing on one specific thing, and you're doing that over and over and over again. And so we've really got to be careful not to

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James Dunn: let this drag on. And it's really let me just go ahead and say that. You know this is what step number one is, or tip number one is gonna be is

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James Dunn: call it what it is. It's not a bad day. It's not a bad month. It's not a bad year, necessarily. It's a bad moment. It's a bad 30 min. It's a bad hour, but it's when you choose to focus on that one negative thing and not allow yourself to think about anything else.

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James Dunn: That's when it can turn into a bad day, a bad week, a bad month, a bad year.

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James Dunn: So think about something in your life that has gone wrong. Did you then allow that to carry over through the rest of your day. An example I always love to use is getting out of bed in the morning. You're groggy eyed. You're not really paying attention to what's going on, and you stub your toe, you bump it on the edge of the bed or on the doorways. You're walking out the door, whatever it happens to be.

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James Dunn: Do you tell yourself in your mind? Oh, my God, it's gonna be one of those days, and then carry that thought with you throughout the rest of the day, which then turns it into a bad hour. A bad

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James Dunn: day, a bad week, whatever you know what I'm saying.

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James Dunn: So really, really take a look at it and call it what it is again. Just a bad moment. I got up. I bumped my toe. Damn that hurts that sucks.

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James Dunn: but shake it off. That's just one crazy thing that happened.

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James Dunn: You know. We don't want to drag that out.

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James Dunn: and if it's not a situation where it's, you know you stubbed your toe. If it's something like that. If you find yourself where you're just feeling like you're in this really really bad mood, what I want you to do is, I want you to ask yourself. You know what brought this on. Think back because something triggered it. You know. I'll share with you my example. You know I mentioned earlier. I had a quote unquote bad day yesterday, which I was telling myself, but it was actually a bad couple of hours.

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James Dunn: What it was for me was I went to do a project last night.

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James Dunn: and as I sat down to do it got ready to to do this work. I realized I wasn't prepared for it, and I got very frustrated because the work I was trying to do I needed to be prepared for it.

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James Dunn: And when I didn't have that preparation

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James Dunn: I started getting mad. I started like, well, this is frustrating me, and that's frustrating me, and you know me. I I like to be as authentic as I possibly can in anything and everything that I do, and it's got to come from the heart, and I got to feel it. And when I'm trying to force myself to do something that I'm not really feeling.

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James Dunn: that just wasn't working for me at all. And we've talked about, you know, knowing when to push yourself through something. But this was something that required my heart, my soul, my my true embodiment of me

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James Dunn: and I I couldn't just keep pushing through this. This wasn't just a physical kind of

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James Dunn: task. It needed my attention, it needed my true self. And so I got more and more and more frustrated until I finally stopped. I said, You know, I just got to stop this because I realized I wasn't going to get anywhere with it. I had to just let it go and understand that project was not going to get done last night, as I hoped that it would.

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James Dunn: but I had to look and say, Okay, what? What was triggering me? And that's what I did. After. The fact was, I looked, I said, what triggered me, and it was, you know, taking that time to reflect on it and say, Okay.

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James Dunn: well, here's when I started getting mad or upset or disappointed and frustrated. So what was it?

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James Dunn: And I? And I recognized that it was that lack of preparation. I realized it. Okay, yeah. You pushed this off a couple of days before, where you had said you were going to get some preparation done on it, and you'd even kind of talked about it a little bit last week about getting some things together for this and being ready for this.

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James Dunn: but I thought that I could just wing this project. Once I got to it. I thought, you know what I've done this a thousand times. I can just do this. It won't be a big deal, and it was, you know I can do a lot of things

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James Dunn: without having to do a lot of preparation, but I'm not going to be able to do them at my absolute best if I don't prepare for them, and it's the same for you. If you're not preparing for something, you're not going to be at your absolute best. And so that might be a cause of frustration. If something comes up in your life like that, I don't want to go down that rabbit hole with pointing towards you. Get back to me

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James Dunn: only because I'm telling. I'm telling my story here. But look at the situation. You know that you got phrased, frustrated in, and ask yourself what triggered this? What was the thought that came up? And what was the thought that I was holding on to? Because once I had that thought of, okay, this sucks and I'm mad. I'm upset. Then it was well, why didn't you start getting prepared for this earlier? And why didn't you get this done

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James Dunn: a week ago, you know, and these are the things that we can really start to focus on. And so let me give you tip number 2, tip number 2 is, give yourself some grace. You don't have to be perfect in this world. You never will be perfect in this world. Sometimes you just have to say, Okay, I made a mistake here. I could have prepared. I could have done some things a lot better before I got here, but I didn't.

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James Dunn: and I don't know if you happen to catch this or not. But I didn't say the word should, because I'm not a big fan of the word should at all, I think, should carries a lot of negative energy with it. I think it carries a lot of blame with it, and I don't like that. I prefer to use the word could, because I could have done some things differently. I made different choices, and now, looking at it in hindsight. I can say, okay.

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James Dunn: I could make different choices in the future. That's easier. That doesn't carry again that negative weight with it's not gonna make you feel shame about yourself. We don't want to beat ourselves up. That doesn't do any good whatsoever. If I'm sitting over here beating myself up over the fact like, Oh, you should have done this, and you should have done that. You should have had all this shit ready for it. You should have done blah blah blah!

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James Dunn: I mean.

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James Dunn: that feels like nasty that does not feel good to me in my body to be saying that thing those kinds of things. But if I'm using the word, could

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James Dunn: I could have done this, and I could have done that. Then it's a simple oh, okay. I just made a choice that I could have done differently, and just by separating those 2, then it's there's no shame on me. There's no guilt on me. There's no guilt on you. You can just look at it differently. Say, okay. Next time I could choose differently, and I will choose differently, because now I understand what that's going to get me if I choose the same things that I did the last time.

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James Dunn: So give yourself Grace. That's Tip number 2, number 3 is, find the lesson so for me.

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James Dunn: going back to you know my story from yesterday, having the the bad nights, the bad couple of hours there. What was the lesson. And I've already kind of explained this, you know, for me specifically, the lesson was, hey, I could have prepared a lot more for this I could have done something differently. So for you

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James Dunn: if you find yourself having a bad day, and you've looked at it, and you figured out what triggered you, and you figured out what upset you, and the thoughts that you were thinking.

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James Dunn: Ask yourself, what's the lesson I can learn here.

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James Dunn: What's the one thing that I can take out of this, because

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James Dunn: I really strongly believe that nothing is ever bad.

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James Dunn: It's taken me a long time to really get there, and there are definitely certain days where I feel like, Oh, this sucks. This is not fucking cool, but in hindsight. If I look back on it, I can say, Okay, there's there's a lesson that I was meant to learn here. What is the lesson that I was meant to learn as I shared again for me in this particular situation. It was. Be prepared. And now, moving forward, I'll be much better prepared. I'm not going to be winging it as much, especially in regards to that particular project that I was working on. So for you.

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James Dunn: You know. What what lesson could you learn from the from the challenge that you've run up to, you know that you figured out caused you to start having this quote unquote bad day.

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James Dunn: Figure that out, because when you can figure out what that lesson is, then it makes it a lot less

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James Dunn: like something that you're going to carry over into the next day, into the next week into the next year. It's if you continue to beat yourself up by not giving yourself that grace or not finding a lesson in it. That's when you end up turning it into a bad day, a bad week, a bad month, a bad year.

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James Dunn: the next tip I want to give you. What are we on here? Tip number 3, 3, 4, 4. Yeah. Tip number 4.

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James Dunn: one thing that I love to do in those situations when I'm having a bad moment.

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James Dunn: and what I did last night

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James Dunn: is find a way to get a win in before the end of the day. Hopefully sooner than that. But find a way to get yourself a small win.

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James Dunn: Shift the focus away from the thing that is bugging you. That's upsetting you. That's got you off kilter right now.

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James Dunn: you know, for me again, had my project

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James Dunn: wasn't going well. So I said, All right, man, this just sucks. This is just not working out. Well, I did the reflection.

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James Dunn: okay, fine, cool. But then I went, and I found something else that I could get a small win in, and it doesn't have to be anything big. It could be something as simple as

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James Dunn: I don't know. Sitting down journaling for 5 min, maybe taking 10 deep breaths. It could be going for a walk. It could be actually doing some other project, you know, if you need to make some sales calls. And you know

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James Dunn: that wasn't the thing that frustrated you, hey? Just make one sales call, even if you know you've got these other things that you were hoping to get done. Just make one sales call.

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James Dunn: put one post out, do one Instagram live, make one comment on somebody else's stuff.

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James Dunn: whatever it happens to be, find one small win in your life that you can do today. So that way you can end your day at least by the end of the day you can look back and say, You know what this thing over here sucked, but I at least had this one little win. I made it a point that no matter how bad. I felt today because of what had happened earlier, that I still went and I found a win. So if you find a way to make that be the end of your day.

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James Dunn: and end the day on a good note. Then when you look back again, that's when we can block this off, and this cuts it off right there. We don't carry this over to the next day and the next day, and the next day.

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James Dunn: and then tip number 5 that I want to give you in this short and sweet episode is what's your you know? What's a bounce back system? What can you do to

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James Dunn: keep yourself from doing this again. Me, I love to

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James Dunn: really take a lot of time to

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James Dunn: ask myself, okay, if this situation comes up again in the future. If this is something that happens again in the future. You know we already kind of talked about the lesson. But how can I avoid this? How can I make sure that this doesn't happen again in the future, and if it does, what's something I can already plan in my head that I will do when that happens, or if this happens.

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James Dunn: what happens, I think sometimes more often than not, is when we have these bad moments, we get frustrated. We get anxious. We get upset, we get whatever.

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James Dunn: and we don't really know what to do. In that moment we're like fuck it. I'm just so pissed off right now. God damn it, motherfucker, you know you start cursing, saying all kinds of things you might not otherwise say, and you just get really mad, and it carries over, even though you may be the the happiest, most go, lucky person on the face of the planet. When you get stuck. In that moment you might find yourself stuck in this negative loop. But if you've taken some time to plan ahead like, Hey, okay, when this comes up the next time, or if this comes up the next time hopefully it doesn't. But if it does.

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James Dunn: how can I better handle that situation?

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James Dunn: So for me again I talked about, you know, putting the plan into place of preparing earlier. But if, for whatever reason, something comes up and I ignore that advice.

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James Dunn: what I can do is I can step back. And I say, you know what? Okay.

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James Dunn: don't try and work on this project today. You've done this before you've gotten yourself into this position before, and whatever the consequences may be, maybe you got to take a little late hit on something you got to do whatever, but step back from it. Give yourself room to breathe. Give yourself some time to

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James Dunn: let this thing go, and come back with it with a fresh, a fresh perspective.

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James Dunn: because pushing through something like this isn't the time. This isn't the time to push through something again. We talk about this. There are certain times when you push through certain times when you need to pull back, and maybe this is one of those times when you pull back a little bit. But having some forethought, having some time that I've spent really thinking about what to do when this situation happens, or if this situation happens again, we don't have to have it written down. I don't have to do anything like that, but at least having some time where I've thought about it

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James Dunn: will give me an extra opportunity an extra out the next time that it does happen. I'm just going to say it fucking, going to happen next time I keep saying that

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James Dunn: someone's gonna let's just use this, that it's going to happen again at some point.

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James Dunn: So I have an out the next time that that happens. I've thought this process out. So those are the 4 thing or 5 things that I want you to do. If you run into a bad moment, a bad hour, a bad day, let's call it. If you run into that situation, take these 5 steps, number one, call it what it is again. It's not a bad day. It's a bad

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James Dunn: hour. It's a bad minute. It's bad moments, whatever, but call it exactly what it is, and don't let it drag out any further than it has to go. Number 2, give yourself some, grace. Don't beat yourself up over this. Don't start talking about what you should do. Talk about what you could do. Okay, number 3 find the lesson. There's a lesson in every single thing that we do, and if you can find that lesson that helps you move forward with it. It helps your day to get better, helps your life to get better.

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James Dunn: Number 4, end on a win. Find a win that you can end your day with that will make you in such a much better place when you go to bed, as you're getting ready to go to sleep, and just even looking back on your days, you're reflecting back on the day you can talk about. Hey, man, yeah, this thing sucked over here. But I ended the day on a win. And that's that's how I want to start. My next day is by remembering. I ended on a win and Number 5, build a bounce back system.

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James Dunn: put some plans into place, really put some forethought into what you would do if this situation happens to come up again. Because if you have that plan in place. It makes it that much easier to get out of move on and be in a much better place the next time. So, as I said. We're gonna keep this one short and sweet. I'm gonna try and cut these episodes back a little bit. Give you some quick nuggets that are a little bit easier to digest and more to the point.

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James Dunn: And but yeah, with that, let me remind you. 1st and foremost, you are not here to be perfect. You're here to get better one step one day at a time, and with that, my friend, get out there. Have an amazing fucking day, and I'll see you next time.