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Have you ever heard someone tell you they are having a bad day and when you ask them why, they roll off a list of highly trivial things that make you want to scream “get over it”.

Bad days are often self-perpetuating. You convince yourself that you are having a bad day and then look for all the evidence that you are indeed having a bad day. This just reinforces a negative outlook that will undermine your confidence and likely to fulfil your expectation of a bad day. Congratulations! One bad day accomplished!

We like to over dramatise. It gives us something to talk about and a basis to relate to one another. How else do you explain the inane conversations about whether it feels like a Tuesday or a Wednesday today? It’s just silly conversation. So is the proclamation that I am having a bad day. Not because they don’t occur, because they can and do. But often, they’re really not as bad as people make out.

I missed the train, therefore I’m having a bad day; I feel awful. Rubbish! You missed the train, catch the next one. What has missing a train got to do with you having a bad day or what will happen for the rest of your day? Even still, is missing a train such an awful event that you have to declare to your colleagues that you are having a bad day? It is a single random event that happens to everybody. In fact it happens to me quite often. I no longer run for trains. If I miss them, so be it. I will take the next train. This doesn’t work as well where the train service runs every hour! But you catch my drift, I hope.

What is a bad day? Is it really that bad?
A bad day is when a high impact and undesirable event occurs and overwhelms your thought process for the entire day, sometimes even longer. If this happens to you because you missed the train and were late for work or because your computer crashed when you were logging on in the morning, then you should ask yourself this question: am I a drama queen?

Scale of importance:

First of all, let’s distinguish between what you feel and what has occurred. Are they related or even connected? Missed a train? Big deal. Late to work? Don’t make it a habit. Just because something hasn’t gone according to plan, it doesn’t require you to feel a proportionate amount of guilt, nor should it affect your mood. These things happen.

General rule of thumb: ask yourself if there is a lesson to be learned from the event. If there isn’t, then you probably don’t have much control over it. In which case, you shouldn’t spend too much time worrying about things you can’t control. There is certainly no point in telling everyone about it and creating an air of negativity about you. If you want to relate to people, pick something topical.

I usually dislike the flippant use of this term, but I feel it’s highly appropriate in this instance: having a bad day? Get over it!

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Tags: confidence, conversations, expectation, negative outlook, random event, trivial things, undesirable event