WHAT YOU FEEL: every day seems to come with some form of crisis, chaos or panic.  You feel like each day is groundhog day and you can’t think clearly throughout the day.  It seems to get harder and harder each day.

PERSPECTIVE: sometimes it is your view of the situation and not the facts on the ground that make the day hazy. Try this: when you get in the shower tomorrow, turn the shower too 100 percent cold at the end. Stay under the shower for 30 seconds. Try this each day for a week. Then each week add thirty seconds until you are up to 3 minutes.

When our business got hit by the financial crisis, each day was like a war zone.  It wasn’t a matter of which step to take on the floor in front of you, it was a matter of whether there would even be a floor to step on. I had just finished a workout and was taking a shower. I turned the water to all cold by mistake. It shocked me.

A thought crossed my mind. This is what it felt like running my company after the financial crash of the fall of 2008. I tried something. I wanted to see how much I could take. If I could stand in the freezing water without flinching, then nothing that came across my desk would seem tough. From that day on, I did it every day and every day I added some time under the freezing water. By January 2009, I was standing under the water for five minutes. I promised myself I would do that every day until we got the company back on its feet. Try it sometime. Like the rest of us crazy entrepreneurs, when I got it up to five minutes, I thought “can I spare that five minutes?”

At the end of each shower, I would turn the water from cold to warm. Wow did that feel good. It might just make the day seem a little more manageable.

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