Have you ever been having a perfectly good day and then had one interaction that completely changes it?

Someone says something.

A client isn't happy.

You get an unexpected response.

Someone disagrees with you.

And suddenly the perfectly productive day you were having disappears while your brain starts analysing what happened.

That was my Monday morning.

And it made me think about something we probably all do far more than we realise:

We give an enormous amount of power to the one thing that went wrong.

Why Do We Remember the One Bad Thing?

I see a lot of people in clinic.

Most come in, we work together, they leave and hopefully I've helped them.

But I can still clearly remember a client from months ago who was unhappy because I was running around ten minutes late.

I'd actually squeezed her into an already busy day because she was in pain. The client before her wasn't feeling particularly well, so I needed a little more time with her.

I popped my head out, explained I was running a few minutes late and carried on.

When I came back out, the next client had gone.

She wasn't happy.

Now, we could debate who was right.

She had an appointment and expected me to be on time.

I believed the person in front of me needed a few extra minutes and that sometimes, when you're dealing with humans, schedules don't run perfectly.

Both perspectives can exist.

But that's not really the interesting part.

The interesting part is that months later, I still remember it.

How many people have thanked me since then?

How many people have I helped?

How many perfectly ordinary, positive interactions have happened?

Hundreds.

Yet that negative experience stuck.

We Do the Same Thing in Business

One unhappy client can make us question whether we're good enough.

One launch that doesn't sell makes us question our offer.

One social media post that disappears into the abyss makes us wonder whether anybody wants to hear from us.

One negative comment can outweigh twenty positive ones.

And sometimes someone else's response becomes something we carry around as though it tells us something fundamental about who we are.

But does it?

When Something Works for Everyone Except You

Years ago, I worked with a business coach.

I was given a strategy and essentially told:

Do this, this and this — and you'll get this result.

So I did it.

And I didn't get the result.

I went back expecting us to look at what had happened.

Maybe we needed to tweak something.

Maybe my audience was different.

Maybe the message wasn't quite right.

Maybe there was another variable we hadn't considered.

Instead, the focus became whether I'd followed the instructions properly.

Eventually, after months without the results or feedback I expected, I decided the programme wasn't right for me.

And I was told I was “uncoachable”.

That stayed with me too.

Because once somebody puts a label like that on us, it's incredibly easy to take ownership of it.

Maybe I AM uncoachable.

Maybe I AM difficult.

Maybe I'M the problem.

But perhaps there's another question worth asking.

Was this simply not the right approach for me?

Something Can Be Good and Still Not Be Good for You

This is something I think we forget.

A strategy can have worked for 100 other people and still not work for you.

A brilliant practitioner might not be the right practitioner for a particular client.

A business coach can be excellent and still not be the right coach for you.

A client can be a perfectly lovely person and still not be your ideal client.

Nobody necessarily has to be the villain.

Sometimes it's simply not a fit.

The problem comes when we automatically turn that mismatch into evidence that there's something wrong with us.

Ask: What Actually Belongs to Me?

I'm not suggesting we ignore criticism.

Sometimes the uncomfortable feedback is exactly what we need to hear.

Sometimes we HAVE messed up.

Sometimes we need to apologise, change something, learn and do better.

But that's different from automatically accepting every negative reaction as evidence that we're wrong.

When something knocks you sideways, ask yourself:

What part of this genuinely belongs to me?

Is there something I need to learn?

Is there something I could have handled differently?

Is this useful feedback?

Or am I absorbing somebody else's frustration, expectations or opinion and turning it into a judgement about myself?

Maybe the answer is a bit of both.

And that's okay too.

Don't Let One Moment Become the Whole Story

Whether you're trying to grow a business, improve your health, build a career or simply work out what the next stage of life looks like, there will always be people with opinions about how you should do it.

There will always be strategies that worked brilliantly for someone else.

There will always be people who don't understand what you're doing.

And there will always be days when somebody else's reaction knocks you down a few levels.

The goal isn't to become completely unaffected by other people.

We're human.

Things affect us.

The goal is to become better at recognising what we should take with us — and what we can leave behind.

So next time something happens and your brain immediately starts asking:

“Is it me?”

Give yourself another question:

“What part of this is actually mine?”

Take the useful bit.

Learn from it.

And leave the rest where it belongs.

☕ Chaos, Coffee & Clarity with Saree Hewlett — conversations about business, health, life and finding the missing piece when everything feels a little chaotic.