Bad Day? Maybe Not ...
Ever have a bad day and it seemed to weigh on you like a two ton elephant? Yep, me too – recently, very recently, like yesterday recently. I think by nature, it’s easy to want to put the bad day behind us and move on. However, I’ve found that I can ignore it but it doesn’t go away until I deal with it. I can try to ignore it but then I wake up in the wee hours of the morning thinking about it, which is in fact what happened.
So, I give. I’ll think about it. I’m going to apply science here and dissect it like I did in my biology classes.
Did my day start off bad? Actually it didn’t. It started off okay, no complaints. Did I make it to work safely? Yes, I did. That’s not a bad thing, right? Was my day at work bad? No, I would say so, it was frustrating at moments but I wouldn’t label it bad. Are my kids healthy and happy? They are healthy – thankfully, and generally happy – well as happy as teenagers starting school in a couple days can be. Did I meet all my commitments I had planned for the day? No, but I did get to some of the major tasks done so I suppose that’s not bad. Did I let my frustrations get the best of me? Yes, that I will say did happen. Ahhhhh-ha! There it is. It wasn’t really a bad day. It was a small sliver of my day which revealed I didn’t live up to my own expectation.
There I did it. I dissected it. I chopped it into pieces so it can’t grow in my mind anymore. Now to polish it off, I will apologize for my kids when they wake up for taking out my “bad” day on them. Then, it will be done.
The funny thing about expectations, they are often something you set up in your own mind. And believe it or not, you have the power to adjust, modify, or let go of it. I think sometimes I forget who is in control here. I’m sure you do too. When we let the control of our minds go the ego is more than happy to take over and take us for a spin around the block, in the form of a bad day.
So while I am conscious of the fact I am in control, there are times I don’t practice the control. It’s definitely an art as much as a science. We let the ego take over, take us for a spin and label it a bad day. What I have learned is that even if I don’t have control and even if ego takes me for a spin, I don’t have to stay there. I’m learning that if it’s waking me up in the wee hours of the morning, jump in and take the spin but this time looking from the outside, just as I did above. Ask yourself some simple questions to define the “bad” day and those most often reveals it wasn’t really a bad day, just a bad moment or frustrated moment. Identify it. Address it. Let it go and move on.
Ideally I will do better job at being aware of my mind and my ego, it can play tricks on me. But if I do get tricked into taking the spin, let myself think about and dissect it it instead of ignoring it and letting it grow. So the bad day really isn’t all that bad. ~ChaCha
