How I deal with bad days

Because we all have them

In the world of real estate, there are a lot of highs and there are a lot of lows. When you decide to work in this business, you find out very quickly that you could be operating at an all-time high one morning, and then by that night, your world can feel like it’s crashing down on you. There are no certainties, and everything is constantly changing. Similarly, that’s the way of the world too.

It’s very easy to get caught up in the chaos, to let the failures get to your head, and to let the lows drag you down so far that you just can’t seem to pick yourself back up. Because once your emotions spiral downward, so do your thoughts. And when your thoughts think negatively, you’re manifesting more negativity into your world. The cycle goes on…

I’m here to tell you that it’s your responsibility to drag yourself out of the hole. You are the only person who can pick yourself back up and remember that it’s just a bad day, not a bad life. And you are completely, more than capable of managing a bad day and letting it turbo blast tomorrow into something great.

We all have bad days. Some are worse than others, but they all suck. We sometimes have to face the part of ourselves we don’t want others to witness or that we ourselves don’t even want to deal with. We’re reactive, stressed, avoidant, running on fumes, probably procrastinating, and falling into our old, nasty habits.

Whatever the reason triggered this bad day — your boss being incompetent, your coworker not pulling their weight, your partner ignoring you, your best friend cancelling on you, a project or deal falling through at work, or the fact that the sun literally isn’t shining today and water is falling from the sky and the traffic just keeps getting more congested and you don’t know why and you overslept and you couldn’t get to the gym this morning and they screwed up your coffee order at Starbucks and you forgot to charge your phone last night so now it’s dying and your internet isn’t working and it’s just one thing after another but you have to get this next thing done and blah blah blah…— just stop. Pause.

Our brains naturally get fixated on the negative and hyper focus on it until we snap. It’s just the thing we do as humans. But what if we chose to deal with the bad day a little bit differently? Hear me out — this is how I deal with my bad days.

1. Feel it

As a member of the human population who copes through classic avoidance from time to time, I hate processing negative emotions. Sometimes, I even push them as far out of my orbit as I possibly can. I keep a lot of these emotions stashed away, internally. And I get frustrated when these emotions don’t listen to me! They just keep crawling back until I realize they’re not going anywhere and I have no choice but to explode.

This was how I used to deal with bad days, until I realized I could choose again. I could dictate how I regulated my trigger response and expedite the bad day. The first step to doing this is to feel it. Feel it all, however you need to. Write down how you’re feeling, type it out on your Notes app, cry, scream, punch a punching bag, vent to a friend, who cares! Get it out of your system and lick your wounds. There’s one caveat though: you have to limit your ‘feel it’ time.

Don’t let yourself drag this out and dwell. Take the time you need to process what’s going on so that you can start to recharge your battery as soon as possible. Then, onward!

2. Do something that connects you back to yourself

I don’t care if that means listening to one song that never fails to bring you back to the happiest moment of your life, or if that means treating yourself to an ice cream cone at Dairy Queen. Go to your favorite workout class or go for a long walk. Read the book you’ve been dying to pick up. It doesn’t really matter, just pick one thing that you love to do that reminds you that there is still a light inside you that can be ignited at any time.

When you do this, it gets your brain to focus on something else. It’s not a distraction, but rather something that activates a beautiful part of you that got clouded while you were busy bursting your life up in flames. It’s a reminder that you are on your own side if you choose to be.

3. Get out of hibernation mode

The biggest mistake you can make when you’re going through a hard time is isolating yourself. Whenever I’ve had a bad day and I have something social of any kind scheduled in my calendar, I dread it at first. I ask myself, why did I schedule this in my calendar? I can’t even form a sentence right now.

Then I shrug and find my legs walking me to my car to get behind the wheel and drive myself to the outside world and talk to people. And every single time, I am not exaggerating, the second I walk into any event with people to meet or connect with, I immediately feel better.

You are not meant to be in hibernation mode, especially when you’re having a bad day! Humans need connection. When you start talking to and listing to others, you get out of your own little world and you get into the real one that actually exists. And you realize, even if it’s just for an hour, maybe it really just was a bad day and not a bad life.

4. Deactivate and regulate yourself

Once you’ve felt it, connected back with yourself, and gotten back out into the world, the final step that’s incredibly important is to slow down. I like to do this when I wrap up a bad day. Breathe through whatever journey the day took you on, and acknowledge that it’s over and you got through it.

As we’ve heard, sleep solves a lot of our problems. If you want tomorrow to be just a little bit better than how today went, prioritize getting some sleep tonight. If you can, physically be in your bed (with no technology) a couple hours before you actually sleep, it helps your body calm down faster. Stay away from social media or anything digital that stimulates your nervous system. Your body and mind are both exhausted enough, don’t self sabotage and make it worse.

Finally, I love a guided meditation before I fall asleep. But if that’s not your thing, go the music route. When you wake up in the morning from a good night’s sleep, you’ll be able to think with a clear head and take on the day — regardless of the setbacks you’ll have to face (if any).

There you have it! Those are the 4 steps on how I deal with bad days. But I’m curious, how do you deal with yours? Let me know in the comments or reply via email!

Cheers,

Angelina