How to Turn a Bad Day Around.
By: Silas Mahner
Tags: Meditation, Productivity, Mental Health, Self Care, Focus

If you are reading this, you’ve had a bad day. And that’s not because you are a failure, or because you just can’t figure out how to “adult”. It’s because you are human, (unless you’re an alien, in which case, do you have bad days?) and all humans have bad days. Regardless of how successful you are, and how often you meditate, you’ll have bad days. Here are some tips on how to turn a bad day around.

Forgive yourself

Probably the biggest part of turning your day around is letting go of the fact it has turned or started off bad. This morning, I slept in an hour past when I planned to get up. Then I proceeded to watch TikTok for almost half an hour after breakfast. This is obviously not unprecedented, but with less time to accomplish my list of tasks, it really didn’t help.

Ultimately, I realized what was happening. I was wasting time doing things that were not good for me in any way. Then I had this feeling of failure. “Why did I let this happen?” “Why did I sleep in?” “Why did I eat that full pizza last night which made running harder?” (No joke I did eat an entire pizza last night) But I realized spending time beating myself up is silly. So, I decided… “hey, you’re only human, get over it, and press on.” So, I did just that.

Do what gives you clarity

You will have to try different things and pay attention to how you feel, but find what bring you clarity. For me, it’s running. For others it may be, journaling, playing an instrument, brewing their coffee, going for a walk, drawing, singing, listing to Metalica, whatever it is, find it and recognize the power it has to help you center yourself.

Once you know what centers you, use it to reset yourself when you catch yourself letting your day get ahold of you.

Get small wins

As Friday is winding to an end, I often make a list of things to do on the following day when I’m still in a work mode. This list can often be large, but when I put my mind to it can often be crossed off in a short amount of time. For me, if I’m struggling with a bad start to my day, I aim to check off the easy things on the list. The things that I would do anyway, like trim my beard.

If you don’t like lists, then focus on what you did well that day, and/or focus on how good you felt a time that you did something that was hard. Oftentimes that gives you the push you need to start rolling in the right direction.

Use incentives

One of the only things that got me to do the things on my list, was the fact I was going to dinner with a friend. It was planned earlier in the week, but I had committed to meeting him at a certain time, so knowing that pushed me to get done the other things on my list.

Another way I used incentives this week was when I told myself if I get up at 6 o’clock on the dot, without hitting snooze, I would owe myself a vanilla bean donut from Donut Planet. Let me tell you something, it worked.

Prioritize

Something that is hard to do, especially if you work off of a list like myself, is push something into the next day, or erase it. However, that’s what you need to do sometimes. If that thing is not the most vital, and especially if it will stress you out all day, and you know you can’t get to it, just move it to a different time, or remove it altogether.

Think about the times you’ve done well

I mentioned this in “Get small wins”, but it also deserves its own space. One thing that has really helped me, is to recall the times I succeeded in beating concupiscence (the tendency towards the easy). For example, I think about how great it felt that time I went to bed at 9:30 without watching any TikTok. I remember vividly how great I felt the next day, and I want that feeling again, hence I make it happen, well…I get close to it.

Avoid media

This one has been a huge one for me. Whenever I watch an episode of New Girl or Space Force, or when I spend time scrolling Twitter, I feel terrible. My personal tendency on the weekend is to literally do all kinds of lazy things because my logic says, it’s rewarding yourself for working 50 hours. The reality is, I actually don’t feel good about myself when I do that. If I read a book, wrote a blog post, learned some German, or went for a run, while it would appear to be exhausting, it actually fills me up.

Media can be really dangerous because it’s like a firehose of dopamine rushing into your brain which then becomes addictive to the point where you can’t put it down (TikTok is the best at this IMO). The reality is our subconscious is upset that we didn’t get the things “we” wanted/needed to get done. It’s really incredible how our brains make us dissatisfied when we have not taken care of ourselves, or have not made time for what we have said is important to us.

End the day well

In my estimation, this is the single most important thing you can do. It is in your power at the end of the day to decide which direction you are going to end in. Even if your day went really poorly, it’s up to you to decide how the day ends. Take stock, forgive any ill feelings you have against yourself, and thank God (or whoever you thank) for all the good things of that day. Things like a house, a job, sunshine — the little things. Then end your day well with the determination that tomorrow is already off to a good start.