It Should Ruin Your Breakfast, But Not Your Lunch
Not long after his book received several harsh reviews by critics at a handful of prominent publications, a writer was having lunch with the great novelist Amor Towles. Still feeling down about himself and his work, when the writer brought up the bad press, Towles passed along some advice he’d once been given: “A bad review should ruin your breakfast, but not your lunch.” It’s natural to take a slight, a snub, or a setback hard, Towles said—the important thing is being able to “move on quickly.”
Not letting things ruin you for too long—that’s the theme of this SIX at 6…
Shower It Off, And Go, “Let’s Go Again”
John Mayer’s definition of a great writer is rooted in how quickly one is able to move on. “You’re a great writer, in my book,” Mayer says, “if, after a bad day—a day where you just didn’t have it, you just didn’t get it—you can drive home with the radio off, knowing you didn’t get it that day, shower it off, and wake up the next day, and go, ‘Let’s hit it. Let’s go again.’”
That Down And Discouraged Mindset Will Win
After being fired from the pilot of Frasier, Lisa Kudrow was at a low point in her career. The role was supposed to be Kudrow’s big break, but instead, it was a setback that left her questioning her future in acting. For a while, approaching auditions with a shaken sense of her abilities, she struggled to get work. Then, she was offered a small, nameless role as a waitress on Mad About You. It was a minor part with no lines, and her agents advised her to pass on it, considering it beneath her and unlikely to advance her career. “I’m not in a position to say no,” Kudrow told her agents, so she accepted the part. By the end of the week, Mad About You producer Danny Jacobson was so impressed with her performance that he offered a recurring role as a quirky waitress named Ursula Buffay. The part would eventually lead to her iconic portrayal of Phoebe Buffay on Friends, as the character of Ursula was carried over into the Friends universe as Phoebe’s twin sister. Looking back on the challenging period that eventually led to her breakout roles, Kudrow said, “It’s okay to be discouraged. But then you’ve got to pull yourself back up. You can’t stay down. That can’t be your mindset for too long, or otherwise, it won’t work out. That down and discouraged mindset will win.”
A Very Big Lesson About Not Only Music But About Life
In the mid-1960s, Herbie Hancock was playing piano with the Miles Davis Quintet at a concert hall in Stockholm, Sweden. As the band approached a climactic moment of Miles’ song So What, Hancock writes in Herbie Hancock: Possibilities, “just as Miles is about to really let loose, he takes a breath. And right then I play a chord that is just sowrong. I don’t even know where it came from—it’s the wrong chord, in the wrong place, and now it’s hanging out there like a piece of rotten fruit. I think, Oh, shit.” In his early twenties at the time, Hancock worried the mistake could cost him his place in the band. “Miles pauses for a fraction of a second,” he writes, “and then he plays some notes that somehow, miraculously, make my chord sound right…unleashing a solo that took the song in a new direction.” “That taught me a very big lesson about not only music but about life,” Hancock later said. “You have to be able to take bad situations and make something constructive happen with them—that’s what I learned from that situation with Miles.” Or as Miles Davis himself liked to say: “if you hit a wrong note, it’s the next note you play that determines if it’s good or bad.”
Where Is Your Mindset After Something Bad Happens To You?
Late in the 2016 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship, Villanova blew a 10-point lead. With 4.7 seconds left, UNC hit a 3-pointer to tie the game. Villanova’s head coach, Jay Wright, called a timeout, and as his players walked to the huddle, they were all saying the same word: “Attitude.” “It’s the most important aspect of our program,” Coach Wright explains in his book, Attitude. “When we break a huddle, we say ‘1, 2, 3, Attitude.’” The test of Attitude, Wright taught his players, is: “Where is your mindset after something bad happens to you?” Where is your mindset after you blow a 10-point lead? Where is your mindset after your opponent hits a 3 to tie the game with 4.7 seconds left? Where is your mindset after something gets in the way of getting what you want? “When I looked into the eyes of our players,” Wright writes, “I saw no anger or regret. No one bemoaned [the UNC player’s] ‘lucky shot,’ or that any of our guys had failed to stop him from grabbing the pass that led to that shot, or anything else.” Instead, “they were all saying, ‘Attitude. Attitude. This is what we do. Attitude. This is what we do.’” With this mindset, the players returned to the court. Villanova’s Kris Jenkins inbounded the ball to Ryan “Arch” Arcidiacono. Arch dribbled up the left side of the court, crossed half court, cut right towards the 3-point arc, where he underhanded a pass to Jenkins, who caught the ball with 1.3 seconds left, and, in perfect rhythm, jumped then released the ball with 0.6 seconds, and hit a buzzer-beater to win the 2016 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship.
A Prescription For Misery
In a 1986 commencement speech, Charlie Munger detailed four prescriptions to guarantee a life of misery. The third prescription: “go down and stay down when you get your first, second, third severe reverse in the battle of life.” “There is so much adversity out there, even for the lucky and wise,” Munger elaborated, not being able to move on quickly “will guarantee that, in due course, you will be permanently mired in misery.” When something bad happens, it should get you down, but it shouldn’t keep you down. It should ruin your breakfast, but not your lunch.