About this quote

Hard days happen to everyone, even people who look like they have it all together. You can notice the setback without handing it control over the rest of your time. Do one small, concrete thing right now — a short call, a paragraph, a walk — and you change the tone of the day. What can you do in the next ten minutes?

When to use it

• After a rough quarterly review at work, I tell myself, 'I'll fix one slide and follow up with one key client tonight.'
• The night before an important exam when my focus collapsed, I said, 'Read one page and sleep; that's progress.'
• After a flare-up kept me from my usual run, I decided, 'Ten minutes of walking now, that's enough for today.'
• When family stress felt overwhelming, I told my partner, 'I'll handle the dinner and then step away for twenty minutes.'