"Never go to bed angry"...with yourself.

If you've ever been married or known people who have, you've probably heard the phrase "Never go to bed angry" thrown around. It's a way to force two people in a relationship to face what's causing conflict and resolve/reduce it before going to bed. Why? Because problems don't go away, no matter how much a couple will continue to avoid the subject. You wake up the next morning, feeling almost hungover from being angry, unable to start the new day clean and unsure if you'll lose ground by letting go of your grudge.

What "Never go to bed angry" does is force communication when both sides would otherwise be too defensive. So if I follow this advice in my relationship with my girlfriend, why don't I follow it in the relationship with myself?

So much time is wasted because we feel defensive, unwilling to give up ground, wanting to blame someone else, finding some bland or destructive way to avoid getting anything done for hours on end. There are a million reasons we get defensive, for me it's fear of failure and perfectionism.

So how do you win this game? How do you get yourself to honestly address what's bothering you? You realize it's just that, a game. The perceived importance of every minute failure is just that, perceived. If you wake up tomorrow aiming to never mess up, guess how that's going to go? You make it through, maybe, 30% of your day smoothly and then BAM! - a problem that you always seem to encounter sucker-punches you. Between your lack of readiness to fail and self-torment from messing up you spend the next 60% of the day being unproductive, projecting and not addressing the issue. Then the last 10% is spent lamenting on the day you've wasted and you end up staying up too late, sabotaging the next day because you can't accept the last. You put all your importance on not failing, so your brain labels the day a failure - one you will always take personally.

But what if....failure wasn't the focus. What if you change the rules of the game? Make the game about awareness. How fast can you catch yourself derailing? If you take a breath before responding or reacting can you even prevent it? In this game, you view failure as something happening externally rather than something you have done. You take responsibility without getting wrapped up in fault. If you can make this a habit it will not only improve your habits, it will remove the emotional baggage that you've attached to so much of day to day life. And maybe, just maybe, not having to carry all that heavy baggage around will leave you with a little more energy to enjoy the things you love and pursue your dreams.

There's no silver bullet. We live moment by moment, in an ever-changing life. The only constant you can control is yourself and how you react to the world around you. Predict, Pivot, Pursue.

P.S. If you haven't heard Mel Robbins' "5 Second Rule" TED Talk, then go watch it right now. It is an incredible tool for prompting immediate action and good habits that fits perfectly with the method in this post.