This morning I was walking to the elevator to go up one floor to the concierge lounge. I was a few paces behind a soldier heading the same direction.

“Going to the lounge?” he asked as he stepped through the door to the stairwell across from the elevators.

“Yes sir.”

“Then let’s go, it’s one flight up – you can do it,” he said with no particular inflection.

Up we went together and I was instantly thankful for every lunge, squat, and bit of cardio I’d done recently because getting winded in front of this man would have been mortifying. When we got to the lounge he swiped his card and held the door open for me.

As soon as I got settled I tweeted (yes, I said tweeted) about it. My buddy OHCowgirl replied a few minutes later:

I thought about it over breakfast and then during the walk to work. It’s interesting how our brain consults its virtual barometer to decide how we’re going to feel about something we’ve experienced. I’m constantly reminded of this quote from Tony Robbins – one of my favorite motivational speakers:

The quality of your life is the quality of your communication (with yourself and others).

What did I communicate to myself about the experience? Of course I focused on the “you can do it.” We all do this when we don’t have enough information to go with the words – we tack other phrases on to what we heard to try to them out – then we decide how we feel about it.

It could have been anything from “you can do it, fat ass” to “you can do it—today is going to ROCK.” The communication with myself was the only thing that helped me embrace the latter.

What could have been a real downer this morning turned into a nice boost. Today is going to be great.