I get the privilege of traveling around the country with the amazing Momentum team, speaking to pastors about the journey toward financial maturity for the body of Christ.

Recently, we journeyed to the college town of Columbia, Missouri. We had churches from around the country that came to find a better way of handling all of their finances. And as with every event, there’s an early morning Starbucks run to kick-start the road-weary team of roughly 10 people.

This particular morning, we stopped at a Starbucks that was essentially on the University of Missouri campus. As our group entered, I noticed that the staff was made up of college kids who looked like they had experienced a long weekend—and hadn’t had their coffee yet, either. That’s understandable for kids away for the first time in their lives living the college dream. It’s still unacceptable, though, from the stand point of customer service, but that’s a post for another day.

The cashier took the names with each order, and the barista began to call them out as he finished each drink. He called out Ken’s name and our team jokingly said, “Keeeeeeeeen!” He then called my name and the team said, “Chriiiiiiiiiiis!” By the time we did it with the third person, he stopped calling off the names.

It took a couple of orders for us to realize what had happened. As we were sitting there, we definitely noticed he decided to change his process. What a bummer. Not for us. It actually didn’t bother us at all. But you could see that he didn’t want to participate in our early morning joy.

The truth is: it was more of a way for us to get ramped up for an event that would take place in a little over an hour and go for two days solid. For him, somehow, he was allowing it to steal what little joy he had that morning. What a terrible way to start off his Monday.

You’ve heard it said a million different ways that happiness is a decision. Perhaps, we were annoying to a very tired college student on Monday morning. But trying to rob us of our joy by not calling out the names wasn’t going to make his day any better. And it actually didn’t take away from what we were doing at all. We stayed happy and launched an amazing event.

If you’re starting this day off and things aren’t going your way, do yourself a favor and SNAP OUT OF IT!!! Make a decision right now to have the best day you’ve had in a long time. Or, stay the way you are and be miserable. You decide.

Question: How do you deal with having a bad day?