How to deal with a bad day

Some days are a punch in the face

You wake up feeling like you’ve been spinning in a washing machine filled with rocks

Your back is aching, your heart feels heavy, and your legs? It’s like a truck ran over them while you were sleeping.

You drag yourself out of bed, hoping the day will get better, but nope – you hit your toenail on the desk, and everything inside you starts collapsing. you want to rip your hair out, scream till god takes your voice, or just break down and cry.

Desperate for a distraction, you open social media, only to find a weird goblin trying to be friends with your woman. cool, cool, cool.

Just when you thought the day couldn’t get any worse, your dad walks in

“I received a call from your school” he says in a tone that tells you he’s been rehearsing this moment all morning. (Cue the hour long lecture, episode 124)

“And by the way, you also forgot to feed the dog, get the groceries, pay the electric bill, water the plants. Oh, and the dog ate the plants because of you.”

Fantastic, as if your personal problems weren’t already enough.

I’m sure you must have experienced a version of this day at some point in your life.

So how do you navigate? How do you get up? How do you get something done?

Well, the answer is simple, you don’t. you sleep for 10 hours, binge watch netflix, and pass out, life will take care of itself.

You really thought i was serious?

But i won’t hit you with those shallow motivational one liners that spike your dopamine only for you to realize 10 minutes later that you’re still the same, you haven’t started anything, and it’s been an hour scrolling.

When you feel like crap, it’s hard to get stuff done.

If you don’t have a reason to get up, a reason to chase that goal, a reason to silence your mind, then it’s safe to say you’ll be skipping days every other day, because life will never be rainbows and sunshine for you.

Once you have a reason to face bad days, and you keep it at the front of your mind, it requires less effort because now your actions are linked to creating something you desperately want or avoiding something you don’t want.

When bad days hit, I forget my to-do list.

To-do lists are basically adult fairy tales.

Most of them never get done, and we all know it.

If life decides to throw me in a dark place, I could drop everything and hide under a blanket for the entire day.

Or I can remove every item on my to-do list and focus on the one thing that actually matters, the one that moves the needle and makes me feel a little less guilty and life a little more in place.

To do lists aren’t a life sentence.

Crossing off one big thing still counts as progress. And on a day when everything’s going wrong?

That’s a win. A big one.

99% of people don’t do anything on their bad days.

They let it turn into a bad week, a bad month, a bad year, and a bad life.

If you want to take 1 day off, it’s okay. you can. you should, if you promise to not make it 2, but if you keep using bad days as an excuse to avoid facing reality, you will have a hard life.

You need to develop some level of stress tolerance and emotional resilience so you don’t default to suicidal thoughts when bad days arrive.

None of us are getting out of this life alive.

May as well make something of yourself and get the most out of life. Otherwise, what’s the point?

The pain and suffering of being human has to count for something.

Make it count.

Make your move.

Or don’t.

Either way, clock is ticking.

(Oh, and please redefine your definition of a bad day after each one. If you’re taking a break every time for the same reasons, you’re being a baby.)