“Well, that’s that. Now we have hit bottom and there is no way for us to go but up.”

This was the calm comment of a business friend who had just received word that his best customer, for whom he spent more than three million dollars a year, was transferring his business to a competitor.

Only a few weeks earlier I had seen this same man storming and stewing because his firm had lost a customer who spent only twenty thousand a year. Then he was sure that the lost business would ruin him.

Why was he such a poor loser one day, such a good one another, and when he really had bad news? It was because the news of the small loss came on one of his bad days, when he was moody. The serious loss came on one of his good days.

We all have our ups and downs, some of us worse than others. Many persons are handicapped by these, but some have learned how they can actually use these ups and downs to give them greater leadership.

Some persons have dug out their diaries and read back over the entries to see the regular rise and fall of their spirits over a period of years. Some have even made charts from these entries.

One person could not do this because he kept a record only when he was feeling on top of the world. This proved especially useful, however, for he now rereads the entries when he gets in a downcast mood, and the memories thus aroused help make his bad days more bearable.

An unusually successful salesman uses a somewhat similar trick. He has photostatic copies made of his best sales orders and carries these in his wallet. When the blues get him, he looks at these for objective encouragement; they keep his sales up.

A Philadelphia sales manager had noticed shifts in his moods but had not noted their clocklike regularity. “I have days,” he said, “when my men all seem to deserve a raise. A couple of weeks later, I want to fire the lot of them.”

“When I am up,” he continued, “I think my wife is beautiful, and I’m bursting with pride over my youngsters. I get lots of ideas. I want to be with folks. Then, suddenly, a few days later I’m a changed man. I am down. My wife looks a sight to me, I worry about the kids, I want to be left by myself, and I find fault with everything I have done.”

He might have added that when he is “up” he eats more, walks and talks faster, wakes up early, feels peppy, makes wildcat investments, laughs off criticism and blunders. This is the time to ask him for a raise, a loan, or a new fur coat.

When he is “down” his appetite is poor, he talks and moves slowly, is constipated for a few days, can’t get enough sleep. In this mood, he returns articles he has bought, takes patent medicines, criticizes everything — himself in particular. He loses interest in the opposite sex. This is the time to leave him alone, to praise him and beat it.

Moods like these come and go with almost the regularity of the calendar. The average person takes about four weeks to go from one crest of optimism to the next. He passes through the slough of pessimism about midway between. Some people have shorter cycles, taking only two weeks to go through one, while others have long-drawn-out ones, lasting six months.

Abraham Lincoln had a long cycle, which went to extremes. He was in a down cycle when he left his bride waiting at the altar the first time his wedding date was set. It took him several weeks to get over this bad spell. Lincoln was also in a downswing when he delivered his imperishable Gettysburg Address; that is why he felt it was a complete failure. Such a deep funk possessed him on his inauguration day that detectives were assigned to guard him against possible suicide.