Many motivational speakers talk about having had a bad day. Most go on to share how they lost it all, or how life crushed them down below the ground level. Or left them homeless and destitute. But... The Phoenix will always rise back up. Never mind that quite a few stories we hear are fabricated. But not all of them. Let's talk about truth though. True stories. Your story. My story. Reality.   "You had a bad day." Pain is a common topic for many people. I'm not talking about physical, injury-based or sickness-based pain. I'm talking about victim-based pain. "You hurt me," kind of pain. "You did me wrong," kind of pain. The Internet has increasingly become a place where people enjoy airing out all their dirty laundry and pining about how much trauma they've experienced. For those inclined to see themselves as victims, the Internet is boomtown! A thriving place to enjoy feeling sorry for oneself. And for blaming others for one's lot in life. In spite of Tik Tok influencers who want to blast the boomers (my generation) for failing to understand things like work ethic, or why we have no clue about life in the world today, or a host of other complaints which every younger generation makes about the older generation (read your history and you'll find many of those hippies who attended Woodstock went on to become quite successful on Wall Street and other places associated with financial success). Every generation thinks it's the smartest one to ever come along until they get old and realize how wrong they were. ;) I don't care about where anybody is on the timeline of life because there's nothing we can do about it. I didn't have a say in being a baby boomer. I just was. My kids had no say in being Gen X or Millennial. By the way, if you're as confused as I am about these labels I found this chart to be helpful. Until I saw that chart I didn't know there were 2 distinct groups of Boomers. It's such a big group I suppose they figured it deserved to be split up. Generation Jones Boomers are those, like me, who were too young to be drafted into military service because of the war in Viet Nam. Our parents were mostly those Post War folks, people whose dad served in World War II. Times Are Always Changing And with it, language. Words like trauma. For my generation trauma, suffering and pain denote something very different than they do for a Gen Z person. Being slighted by somebody, snubbed or even ridiculed isn't any of those things for me, but they're common among Gen Z. If you were write a mean, hateful review of this podcast for Apple Podcasts I would not think much of it. I certainly wouldn't be traumatized by it. It would likely cause me no discomfort. I might be puzzled by it, but my viewpoint would have a lot more to do with the author of the review than me. I'd likely wonder what's happening on somebody's life that might compel them to use such a platform to air their grievance. And it'd be likely that the person to write such a review would have never reached out to me because that's not how these things tend to go. But take that same scenario and apply it to a podcaster half my age and it could devastate them. Might even cause them to quit podcasting. A single hateful review. A complete stranger wielding that kind of power seems strangely weird to me, but I see it constantly. Podcasters (and anybody else doing something) consider themselves traumatized by some unjust critic. The trauma is only possible because we give others permission. We say YES to whatever it is we think is happening. Or we reject it and move on with our life, which is what I choose to do. A person has a bad day. They take it out on me. And that affects me how? It doesn't if I don't let it. It can cause me to have a day, too - IF I permit. IF I decide I'm going to be negatively impacted by some ninnie who has no clue about me, or my life, or what's going on with me - some stranger who happens to ...