Having a hard day, week, year, or even decade can become soul crushing. When we go through our days and all we hear is every way that we messed up, or we could be doing better, or even the small frustrations that become overwhelming, staying hopeful can seem impossible.
A very bad, no good, day
We have all been there. It just starts off wrong, right? Maybe we wake up grouchy or the first thing your eyes hit is something that just irritates you. Maybe you hit snooze so now your already running five, ten minutes late. Next you can’t find something you desperately need. Then you need gas for you car, now your another twenty minutes late. You hit every traffic light. You spill coffee on your shirt, report, keyboard. Your boss finds every small tiny mistake you’ve made. An emergency hits your desk five minutes before you need to leave and your partner has already been giving you a hard time about leaving the office late. Maybe these are your exact minor inconveniences, or maybe you’ve thought of a different but equally small and frustrating set. Either way, at the end of the day, you feel like nothing has gone right and that feeling can become overwhelming. One or two of them, maybe you can shake off. Maybe you can even shake of five, or ten, or fifteen. But we all have a number where we just feel dejected and overwhelmed. And if this feeling persists beyond the day to the week or year? It can grind you down and burn you out.
Finding your ray of sunshine
When I was looking for a picture for this blog post, I wanted something small but victorious. Because this isn’t about the big win, the victory at the end of a fight, say. This is about the small wins. The fact that even though your day was awful, you went to the gym anyway (even if it was a half hearted workout). Look for that small win. Maybe it was enjoying your child’s smile at the end of the day. Maybe it was the fact that you took your lunch break despite of everything on your plate. Maybe it’s just the fact that you made it through the day without quitting. The point is, there is always a small ray of sunshine if you look hard enough. And just looking is starting the process of getting out from underneath all the soul crushing awfulness that is grinding you down.
Need some help?
Okay, so you looked. You really tried. And yeah, there was kindof of one or two things but what does that mean? So what if you actually ate breakfast today, the rest of the day was still awful. So great, you managed to not snap at your husband, wife, partner when you walked in the door but you sure had a doozy of a fight after dinner. What is the point? The point is that this is the first step. Even finding the one small victory in your day starts to retrain your brain to look for the victories, to focus on the small successes. If your brain is looking for what is going well, it has less time to ruminate and obsess and get dejected about what is going wrong. Part of a no good day is the feeling that no matter what you do, everything will be awful anyway. That defeated, depressed person is going to struggle to be creative or positive or motivated. And if you loose those three qualities, turning your day or week or year around is going to be hard. Because in these times with the stresses of today, we all need all the creativity, motivation, and positive attitude we can muster to thrive.
If this sounds like you and your looking for a little help, please reach out to Centered Wisdom to start your journey to a happier and more fulfilled you. You can schedule an appointment through our website, Request an Appointment, or by calling us at (650) 993-9222.
Good luck!
