“I tried having a bad day once. I didn’t like it, so I decided not to do it again!

~ My Therapist

Imagine you woke up on the wrong side of the bed, your toast fell on the floor (butter side down), the traffic was terrible, the client was a no-show for your meeting, and the printer wouldn’t work.

By the time you made it back home, your mood was so bad that you weren’t safe to be around.

What happened next?

Did you grab a couple of beers and watch Netflix until your eyeballs fell out? Or maybe you yelled at your kids and spouse while you tried to get dinner on the table?

Neither of those feels like a recipe for making things better. (But both are coping strategies I’ve tried!)

It’s going to be OK.

Thinking about that “bad day,” how long did it take before everything that happened that day was no big deal?

Sometimes I’ll be relating what happened in my week, and I’ll say, “Tuesday sucked!” and the person I’m talking to will ask, “Why? What happened?” And now, three days later, I can’t even remember!

At some point, everything that happened on that day will no longer bother you – so the question is – how long do you want to wait to get over it?

Get back to home base.

Reducing the time it takes me to notice that I’m “out of sorts” and choosing a different way to respond to those events means I no longer have to endure “bad days.”

Imagine if I woke up on the wrong side of the bed and thought, “Wow, something feels off today.” So, instead of rushing into the thick of things, I paused to see what was disturbing me. Ah, it was that conversation with Karen I had the night before – I made a note to come back and ask her for a “do-over” later today.

Then, when my toast hits the floor, I’m more likely to laugh at the vicissitudes of life. If I encounter traffic, I could use it as an opportunity to think through how to have a different conversation with Karen later. When the client no-shows, I’m grateful—it gives me a chance to clear my to-do list. When the broken printer gets in the way, I remember that this printer has been unreliable for a while and make a note to buy a new one.

The critical pattern is Notice => Choose. How quickly can I notice that I am “out of sorts?” Then, once I see it, I pause to choose the response to create the situation I’m looking for.

If you pause right now and review your last 24 hours, are there situations where you are “out of sorts?” What do you want to create from those situations?