7 Easy Ways to Improve a Bad Day | Successify!

Let’s be honest – we all have bad days, and sometimes there just seems like there’s nothing we can do to improve it.  And no matter how many times our friends or coworkers tell us to ‘Cheer up already!’, things just don’t seem to get better… if anything, they can sometimes get worse.

Now the peeps over on Successify! have come up with 7 Easy Ways to Improve a Bad Day, which in turn I believe they got from Geoffrey James at Inc. Magazine.  It’s always good to share, right? 😀

So here’s my take on their steps.. and if you want to see the original post, please click the link at the bottom of the page.

1. Remember that the past does not equal the future.

It’s quite easy when you’re having a string of negative things occurring in your life for your brain automatically create some sort of pattern that you easily fall into.  Reminiscing is fine and all, but not when it affects how you deal with things in the here and now.

I know I sometimes get stuck in a rut by repeating past events to the point where I’m not sure if I would know how to deal with things any other way.  And that’s kinda sad.

2. Refuse to make self-fulfilling prophesies. 

Just like the first point, by believing you’re having a bad day and that the rest of the day won’t get any better, then it won’t.  A bad mood can easily take over your day and colour the rest of it black.

It’s the same with anything in life – dating, job hunting, finding love, saving money, losing weight, etc – if you already believe you’ve been defeated, then you’ll continue to do so.

It’s much easier to deal with things by not dealing with them and continue with how you’re already living your life.  But let’s be honest, will that truly get you anywhere?

3. Get a sense of proportion.

We’ve all had times when something slightly bad has happened in our lives where we somehow blow it out of proportion.  The saying to ‘not sweat the small stuff’ is completely accurate and after awhile that ‘horrible event’ will just fade into the past, and hopefully you’ll be able to laugh about how silly you were later on.  If you remember it at all.

4. Change your threshold for “good” and “bad.”

Perhaps we all need to change how we view things that happen in our lives.  It’s quite easy to say ‘keep positive’ without some kind of guideline of what makes a good day.  Obviously is something truly horrible happens, like you’ve been mugged and they drain your bank account, you can be justified to be sad about it.  It’s more about not taking too many little things to heart.

5. Improve your body chemistry.

This isn’t always an easy thing for some people, but by taking a walk or making yourself a healthy dinner, it can vastly improve your mood.  Let’s be honest, we all feel better after we’ve done something good for ourselves, despite the desire to give ourselves a ‘treat’ to make ourselves feel better.

I know for me personally, this is something I need to do more often and break the cycle of being so sedentary.  I need to put down the remote, close the laptop (except when writing for you lovely people, of course lol), and just get out there more.

Not necessarily to exercise or lose weight per se, but just to be out more, as that could bring all sorts of new opportunities to meet interesting new people and have some kind of excitement in my life.  And get back into going to social groups like the (naked) massage classes I used to go to.

(And yes, I’ve actually been invited to a naked yoga class.. Not sure I’m quite ready to be that open and social just yet.  😉 )

6. Focus on what’s going well.

We’ve all been there.  There’s loads of good stuff going on in your life, but you focus on the one little thing that isn’t so great.  It’s always been easier to look for the negatives in life instead of the positives.  I know I do this without meaning to.  Sure, I’ve got a job but because it’s not the job I’d like to have or at the level I was at before my redundancy, I sometimes can’t help but focus on where I’m not instead of where I am.

I suppose the best thing you can do when you’re starting to feel down about something in your life is to make a list of all the positives and negatives happening at the moment.  You might just be surprised which list has more entries.

7. Expect something wondrous.

I suppose this is mostly about looking at things happening around you with an open mind and a sense of wonder.  To look at life like it’s an adventure and to look forward to each new experience.  Hell, perhaps even to look forward to each repeated experience and to find something new in it each time.

Sometimes it seems easier to just look at things with a defeatist attitude that can lead to other things, like depression or social anxiety.  I know I do, and it’s something I struggle with on a daily basis.  It’s sometime seems easier to just give up on trying to go for something good in life and just allow yourself to bog down in the sludge of dreariness.

Here’s to trying to find a more positive outlook on life and living more in the world in 2014.  🙂

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