People Remember Your Bad Days (Truby Tip)

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Last Updated on July 9, 2024 by Bill Truby

Learn why people remember your bad days more vividly than your good ones and how this survival instinct impacts your leadership and relationships. Understand the importance of addressing and apologizing for bad days to rebuild trust and reassure your team or loved ones.

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Video Transcript

Did you know that people remember your bad days more than your good ones?

I don’t care what the relationship is, a spouse, a leader, a child, people remember your bad days more than they do your good days.

And do you know why?

It’s because of their survival instinct. It’s science.

If you’re walking out in the woods and you come close to a boulder, and the landscape is beautiful but out from
behind the boulder slithers a rattlesnake you’re going to be afraid and all of a sudden nothing else matters.

Secondly, when you’re walking on that same path again and you come close to that bounder, you’re going to remember the rattlesnake moment.

Even if there isn’t one now, you’re going to remember it. When you get close to that boulder, everything fades away and you remember that moment.

So you’re leery, you’re weary, you give that boulder a wide berth.

It’s the same in your leadership and in your relationships.

If you have a bad day, and you do something that is negative towards someone else, they’re going to remember that day. And they are going to remember it more than your other good days.

So be careful. Be careful. And if you have a bad day, fix it. Apologize.

So that you can tell people there’s not a rattlesnake under this boulder anymore.

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