“I wish I could have a good day today”. Do you ever wish you were in control of how your day turned out? Well, turns out, you are! Today we are talking about how to have a great day (with you in the driver’s seat) in three steps.
1. Decide that “Today is a good day.”
Sometimes, when you wake up in the morning and you have already decided that you are not going to have a good day. Maybe you didn’t get enough sleep, or you feel a cold coming on, or you just don’t want to go to work. You wake up with a huff, reluctantly push yourself out of bed, look pathetically at yourself in the mirror, feeling sorry for the person you see. Just me?
The secret to having a good day starts first thing when you wake up. It doesn’t matter how you feel or what your plans are, you need to tell yourself that “today is going to be a good day” and mean it. In doing so, you are recognising that you have control over how your day is going to go. You’re committing to that person in the mirror that you are going to do everything you can to make it great. Simply saying “today is going to be a good day” out loud might even trigger your brain to think of solutions to problems or fun ideas. For example, when I said it this morning, I started to think about how I could make a Spanish class I was planning more fun for my pupils and myself. Suddenly, my brain is wired to not only see the good in the day, but also create the good in the day.
2. Treat yourself
Speaking of plans, having something to look forward to is a great way to ensure that you have a great day, no matter what happens. In fact, if you can find several things to look forward to dotted throughout your day, then that is even better. For example, I really look forward to my morning writing, which I do first thing when I wake up. I then always make sure I have a nice lunch to take to work so that I have something to look forward to at lunchtime. I also normally plan something in the evening that I know I’ll enjoy – it could be as simple as watching a film with my husband. These things are not overly exciting, but they are things I enjoy and do for me, which means that I rarely skip them, because they are my key to having a good day. Planning things to look forward to is especially important if you know that you’ve got a hard day ahead. In my old work, we used to have a 3 (or more!) hour work meeting around once a month. On these days – which I hated – I would always bring extra snacks, wear my favourite comfiest clothes, and go to a café and treat myself to a coffee at lunchtime.
You can still live a healthy life and treat yourself daily. Treats don’t always have to mean sweets or scrolling on your phone. You know yourself what is good for you personally and what isn’t. Watching my favourite TV show for an hour with a cup of herbal tea and a few squares of chocolate in the evening is fine for me, I know that I could do that every day. However, if I were to double the chocolate and the screen time, that might not feel so good to do daily. Find ways to treat yourself that not only feel good, but that you know you will benefit from later: quality time with a loved one, reading a book in a cosy setting, giving yourself a manicure. Never miss a day of looking forward to things!
3. Pivot when you need to
This is an important one for me that I often forget. Sometimes I just hear Ross from friends in my head saying “PIVOT!!!”. There are times when I really need to hear it. You know when your day isn’t going well, and it gets to a point where you just resign yourself to having a bad day? This is where Ross Geller comes in. PIVOT!!! That’s all it takes. Just pivot your day, change your attitude, change the setting, forget about what came before. Take a deep breath. Remember that “today is going to be a good day”, and no matter what point you are at in your journey today, that statement can still be true. You are in the driver’s seat. Maybe your car broke down, or your plans got cancelled, or your boss made you feel bad about your work. Excluding the catastrophic and the life-threatening, in most circumstances you can turn it around. For me, it is in these pivot moments that I realise a bad day is, more often than not, self inflicted. I realise, normally after having let too much time pass, that it is not the circumstance but my own ruminating that has pushed me into the bad day
A masterful pivot must involve gratitude. So that went badly, but it could have been so much worse. Look at what I have, I’m so grateful. Actually, life is not too bad. Actually, I still have the opportunity today to be grateful for what I do have, and continue to make the most of it. A pivot also requires resetting your expectations, or removing expectations altogether from the rest of the day. Can you imagine? Once you have pivoted with gratitude and new (or no!) expectations, you have to push off with force in a new direction. I push off with positivity, and if I’m hit with another wall in my day five minutes later, do you know what I do? I pivot again. And again and again and again. Until I feel light, free, and untouchable.
I hope you feel a little more in control know that you can create a good day, treat yourself, and pivot again and again. You’ve got this!
Linggow 