What To Do When You’re Having A Bad Day

This article will address what to do when you’re having a bad day. It happens to all of us. There is no getting around it. If you’re human, you will have a bad day. Hell, you might have bad weeks, months or even years. Life might deem it a perfect time to swat you around like a punching bag at the most inopportune moment.

There is no getting around it. Sh*t happens.

What matters is how we respond to the bad days when they do come. What’s more, your success will in large part be determined by how you respond do the “bad” days. This article will discuss the best way I have found to handle them.

Read on if you’re interested in learning about it.

We All Have Bad Days

Despite what you might believe, everyone has bad days. It doesn’t matter who you are, what you do, how wealthy you are or where you live. Nothing can insulate you from the chaos of life. Nothing. It’s absolutely impossible. The only practical way that it could (almost) happen is if you managed to build an airtight, self-sustaining capsule which floated in the vacuum of space for all eternity. And even then, life would somehow find a way to mess with your plans. A comet would hit you. Because life is unpredictable.

It’s also what makes it so much fun.

I think the media has conditioned us to believe that being wealthy and famous also means living in a state of perpetual carefree bliss.

That’s not at all the case. I personally know a few wealthy people (millionaires) who have their fare share of problems. In fact, being wealthy and famous can actually exacerbate some of your problems, not help them. It takes lots of self-knowledge to use wealth wisely.

The reality is that if you’re human you have ups and downs, struggles, disappointments, and shattered expectations. It’s part of the deal of being human. There is no getting around it.

Some days you wake up filled with energy and positivity; your day flows effortlessly from one accomplishment to the next, it’s like life is dancing to your tune, flowers bloom and rainbows populate the atmosphere as you glide about the world. All the traffic lights turn green as you approach them.

Other days you roll out of bed without having slept a wink, knowing, expecting, that the day ahead will be a slog. You know that by even thinking that way you’re creating a self-fulfilling prophecy, but no matter how logical or reasonable your inner voice is you just can’t shake the feeling of something being off. It’s a persistent little feeling in the back of your mind you just can’t shake; a little goblin nibbling at your heels.

You struggle through your work. Your results disappoint you, even if they’re remarkable. Nothing seems to work, nothing is good enough nor fast enough nor fun enough. On a bad day, you’re a failure all around. You realize, become utterly convinced, that your parents raised a failure. Your friends see you as a failure. You’re unattractive. And you’re out of shape.

This ever happen to you? Or am I the only one?

Rest assured, we all have these days. Despite the image people project with their perfect social media profiles, the reality is they’re human too. So they have bad days, too. It comes with the territory. You don’t get to be human and not have bad days.

And one of the greatest factors in success is what we do when these days show up

How To Handle Bad Days

Look, I know I’ve been writing about “bad days” as if they were a fact of life. The reality is a “bad day” is only a matter of perception. And we can change our perceptions. We have control over them, believe it or not.

But how do we change our perceptions?

Here is where it’s important to know yourself and to know your species (aka homo sapiens).

We are animals. We have emotions. Emotions mean we have moods. A mood is simply a tendency to assign a certain polarity (good or bad) to our experiences. You can be in a good mood when someone curses at you on the street and it doesn’t phase you, it just slides off of you life butter on hot teflon. But you can be in a bad mood and have the same thing happen and then chaos ensues. You either give the curse back to the offender or hold onto it and stew in it throughout the day until you release it on someone you care for.

So a “bad day” is really just a mood. It isn’t your fault, it’s a part of being human. It isn’t permanent, either. It won’t irreversibly determine your future. And the good news is…

You can change your moods.

You just need to know how. It’s super easy. I do it all the time.

How To Change Your Mood (For The Better)

Walking – In my opinion, walking is the most powerful activity we can do to improve our moods. It was Hippocrates, a physician in Ancient Greece and the father of medicine, who said:

“If you are in a bad mood go for a walk. If you are still in a bad mood go for another walk.”

The reason I believe walks are the most powerful activity we have to improve our moods is the following: I sometimes go on walks when I’m in a good mood. While I always go on walks when I’m in a bad mood.

I’ll explain. Walking takes no preparation. It takes no skill other than what we learned as children. It’s not necessarily aerobically demanding, but it can be if you want it to. And you can do it anywhere at any time.

In other words, walking is EASY.

It’s walking’s ease which makes it so powerful.

See, when we’re in a bad mood we tend to either distract ourselves with entertainment, drugs or self-created drama. We do these things because they’re EASY in the short run. It’s easier to entertain ourselves than to explore our negative moods. It’s easier to drown out our negative moods in drugs than to work through them.

But by ignoring our negative moods we let them fester. And when our negative moods fester a couple of things happen:

1. They last longer.
2. They become a greater part of our personality

Every time you do something you get better at it. This includes moods. Every time you fall into a negative mood you get better at expressing that mood.

So it’s in our best interest to handle our negative moods when they come about. We have the tools to do it, because we’re human. We can handle our moods. Walking is the most powerful way to do so, because it’s so easy. Walking while you’re in a bad mood allows you to disentangle yourself from your moods. When we walk, a symphony of activity occurs in our brain; experiences are integrated, ideas become connected. Mood-regulating neurotransmitters are released. You literally walk yourself out of a bad mood.

So the next time you’re in a bad mood I invite you to go for a walk. I guarantee that it’ll turn your negative mood around. And if it doesn’t, then take a page from Hippocrates’ book and go for another one.

What do you think? Please, share your thoughts in the comment section!