“A bad day for the ego is a good day for the soul.” This quote is from Coach Chris, who is connected to Jesse Itzler. You’ve heard me mention Jesse before; he wrote Living with a SEAL, one of my most highly recommended books.
Jesse’s quote really stood out to me, and it reminds me of a blog I wrote in January, Set Failure Goals. I talked about setting a goal for the number of failures you’ll have because the number of failures often leads to the number of successes. At Service Express, we often say everything we do well today, was something we did poorly at one time. It was likely a problem that we fixed and then continued to improve as we scaled. That’s how we’ve built the company and grown over time, so I wanted to revisit this idea of failure, stretching ourselves and trying new things.
My family has taken up wake surfing; the kids all learned how to do it, my wife Jodi learned how to do it, and I was the last to try it. The first time I tried, it didn’t go great. I had a number of failures and couldn’t get up. I got back at it recently but still couldn’t get up. I took a break while others surfed, but I decided I needed to try again. I got back in, and I finally got up! Check out my Instagram post for the proof!
It wasn’t pretty or smooth—I was barely in the surf—but I was up and going. It took a few tries each time, but I improved each day. I’m looking forward to next summer when I can build on that success and continue to improve.
So, I wanted to leave you with that quote: “A bad day for the ego is a good day for the soul.” As summer winds down and we look ahead to the fourth quarter and 2025, think about what you’ve failed at. Have you stretched yourself? If not, there’s still time to do it.
