Recently, a friend of mine asked, "How can you be so positive all of the time? Don't you ever have a bad day?" I had to confess that I have many bad days. In fact, I informed my friend that I was having a terrible day that day. Yet, I had to remind my friend that I don't judge my life on the basis of one day. I judge how well I am doing by looking at the big picture.

I learned this lesson as a young stockbroker. When I would first invest in a stock, I would watch that stock like a hawk. If it went up that day, I would be excited. On the other hand, if it went down, I'd get depressed. Well, it took a little while, but eventually, I learned that you can't judge an investment by its performance on a particular day. Even the best investments can lose money on a given day. The key to judging an investment is by looking at its performance over time.

Well, the same is true in judging your performance towards your goals. You can't judge how well you're doing as a salesperson, entrepreneur or a parent by the results of a single day. You're simply not going to make the sale, turn a profit or say all of the right things everyday. The best you can you hope for is that, through all of the peaks and valleys, your stock will steadily rise over time.

Yet, too many people miss the peaks of success because they get mired in the valleys of failure. For example, when the stock market crashed in 1987, millions of investors sold their holdings and got out of the market. They saw one very bad day in the market and bailed. Yet, had they looked at the big picture, they wouldn't have been so worried. Even with a 508-point drop in a single day, the market was still up over 30% for those last two years. And with the economy steaming steadily ahead, the long-term outlook was positive. In fact, it took just 15 months for the Dow Jones to return to its pre-crash levels. And over the next decade, it more than quadrupled. Yet, many people missed out on one of the greatest bull markets of all-time because they let one bad day - November 19, 1987 - scare them out of the market.

It's All Smooth Sailing (Part II)

If you're going to make the most out of this game of life, you can't let a bad day scare you out of the arena. You have to take the long-term view. Sure, today may have been a terrible day, but what about the long-term outlook? How have you been doing over the last six months? What can you expect for the future? When you put your situation into this kind of perspective, does one bad day really matter all that much? It's just one of the valleys you have to go through to get to the next peak.

With this kind of realization, you're unlikely to get rattled and give up on your goal. You're more likely to ride out the highs and lows on your journey to success. And perhaps, equally important, you're far more likely to enjoy the trip. Take it from someone who has experienced some very dramatic peaks and valleys, a sense of balance is a key to happiness.

If you allow your mental state to fluctuate with your fortunes on any particular day, you'll be on an emotional roller coaster. Some days, you'll be happy and on top of the world. And other days, you'll be miserable and depressed. I don't think that anyone really wants to live in this kind of turmoil. Well, the way to avoid these highs and lows is to smooth out your perspective and take a more long-term view of your circumstances. As Samuel Butler once wrote, "Happiness and misery depend not on how high up or low down you are - they depend not upon these, but on the direction in which you are tending."