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Did You Do Everything You Could?

In the spring of 2020 I published The Money Tree, my first work of fiction. The book came out on April 7th, and instead of beginning my North America tour, I stayed at home and talked to people online.

This was hard from the start and never got easier.

Amazon showed the book as shipping with a two-week delay (even though they actually shipped with normal speed). When you tell people they won’t get a book for two whole weeks, most people just don’t order. And of course, every retail bookstore was closed for months.

It was a tough season to launch a book! I did 30 days of YouTube Live, I had a lot of great podcast interviews come out (including more than ten on A-list shows), and I even got a positive review in The New York Times.

Despite my efforts, the book never really took off. The world was distracted with lesser issues, especially this weird new coronavirus thing that turned out to be entirely related to a spring break hangover.

I was pretty discouraged after a year of writing the book and a couple months of full-time promotion. But I also knew—at least in that case—that I’d done pretty much everything I could.

I wasn’t able to go to forty cities the way I’d hoped, which definitely would have helped. There were also a lot of other challenging circumstances during the first few months of pandemic life.

Reflecting on the experience a few months later, I still felt somewhat disappointed. The Money Tree is my favorite book I’ve written so far, and I wanted to advance a genre (business fiction) that usually puts out fairly mediocre books.

Nevertheless, I was able to move forward without my disappointment turning into absolute discouragement. The key difference: I’d done all I could.

The Difference Between Acceptance and Rationalization

Evaluating your effort in the aftermath of a disappointment is very different from just saying, “Oh, it’s okay that thing didn’t work out… don’t worry about it.”

If you’re the kind of person who worries, and especially if you tend to obsess, then just hearing “Don’t worry about it” won’t do much for you.

But that’s not what you’re doing when you focus on the effort you put in. You’re evaluating the one thing that’s within your control!

As you reflect on an outcome that didn’t go your way, think of it like this:

Was there something you knew would make a difference but you held back on? If so, that’s your fault. Sure, you can get over it and move on, but don’t rationalize. Don’t kid yourself. It didn’t work out because you didn’t put it in the effort.

Alternatively: did you do what you knew how to do (and maybe even tried a few other things for good measure) yet still met with disappointing results? In that case, let it go. You tried. You did your best! And now you can go and do your best with something else.

Maybe this time, things will go the other way—your commitment to doing everything you can will be rewarded far more than you expect.

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P.S. If you haven’t read The Money Tree, pick up a copy online or from your favorite bookstore. There’s also an audiobook version.