# Chapter 333

Made it through the difficult challenging day and most things came together, in spite of the lack of quality sleep. This proves that you can turn it around and have a different day than you are heading toward, if you apply enough effort to turn it around and head in a different direction, get a different result. There are always going to be difficult days, there are always going to be distractions, there are always going to be options about how you respond it. And there is the real crux of the matter for me - the energy to respond in a helpful way.

There are three parts to that sentence and idea - energy, response and helpful. All three are necessary in order to have a positive outcome. When I don’t get enough sleep, energy management is critical. I feel like crap when my sleep gets shorted, and that skews my decision making matrix and my willingness to compromise or flex (which is always critical because other people may be having a crap day too) and my willingness to do anything productive other than piss and moan about how much I want to sleep. So to choose a different response takes an intense intentionality that I don’t normally have. You have to dig deep on these days to find that need or inspiration to make this effort. And to make it helpful. It is more difficult than it sounds I assure you. Mostly I just want to hit a punching bag or something I am such a grumpy ass, but this is not helpful. Helpful is setting aside all your legitimate complaints and situations, and looking for a way to move forward, help others, get it done, finish the job, and then sleep much better tonight.