Sometimes, we meticulously plan ahead and yet no matter how hard we try, nothing goes well and we end up having a bad day. A bad day here and there is nothing to fret about. They serve as a reminder to appreciate the good moments as they come. In this article, we’re going to share how to avoid having a bad day as much as possible by creating a better life plan for yourself. It’s not a fail-proof plan, but you’ll still be better off than most people who create their own bad days by doing the opposite of what we’ll be sharing. So, let’s figure out how to reduce the number of bad days.
How to Avoid Having a Bad Day
1. Be kind to everyone you interact with
When it comes to human interaction, you can eliminate nearly every bad day just by being kind to people. Think of a time when you wrote a nasty comment online, and someone started an online fight with you. You probably became angrier or more upset. That’s an example of how some people cause their own bad days. Maybe you think people are stupider than you or you’re morally more upright than they are, but typically if you spend your time constantly uplifting people instead of putting people down, you’ll find you’re actually way happier. You can be the person everyone goes to to hear a kind word. Those people are hard to find and usually they can avoid having a bad day with their actions.
2. Go to sleep early
Now this advice is going to sound generic because you’ve heard it a million times before. But it’s true, when you get enough sleep at night and wake up naturally, you end up performing better. Your brain health will determine whether or not today is a good or bad day for you. If you regularly wake up to an alarm blaring you awake, you’re probably not getting enough sleep. Going to bed early so you can wake up naturally will allow you to ensure that you can have more positive interactions because you’re able to think clearly. Sometimes, you can’t get as much sleep as you’d like because you’ve got kids or a sleep disorder. But your mood will depend on how well rested you are for the most part.
3. Meditate
You can avoid a bad day most days if you do a daily meditation practice. A guided meditation can be a great way to help you manage negative thoughts. You’ll watch those thoughts surface and float away. On most bad days, we tend to ruminate on bad thoughts going down rabbit holes with them. And that ends up making us cry or feel more tension in our bodies. It doesn’t make us feel good. When you meditate often, instead of only whenever something goes wrong, you get better at managing your thoughts. You’ll find going into a flow state where thinking isn’t as common is easier. You’ll get better at living in the moment instead of time traveling between the past and future.
4. Exercise when feeling tense
On bad days, exercise could do your body some good. Fight or flight is a response to danger. However, since there’s no wild animals chasing us down anymore, we’ve still got this system even when dangers don’t lurk. When you feel stressed from work or a personal problem, fighting and running are good exercises as that’s what your nature has programmed for you. So, sign up for that martial arts class or go for a run around your neighborhood if possible. Sure, you could also lift weights or do a dance class if that’s what you prefer. Find the exercises that allow you to get the tension and stress from your bad day out of your system.
5. Repeat positive affirmations
Positive affirmations can be transformative when you’re having a bad day. Reciting them isn’t about magically making your problems go away or pretending they aren’t happening. It’s about rewiring your brain to look at things with a more glass half full perspective. Bad days happen to everyone. When you recite positive affirmations often, you’ll slowly begin to shift your thinking to be more positive. As a result, you’ll recover from bad days much more easily. And you won’t get sucked into the negativity vortex of thoughts. This isn’t about being woo woo or mystical. It’s about really trying to look at the world more positively instead of the woe is me attitude.
6. Spend time with positive people
When you’re having a bad day, avoid the negative people so you don’t become just like them. Spend time with people who are positive, but don’t drain them with your negativity. Aim to think and live like them. It’s not about finding a positive person you can vent to, but finding someone who can reframe your thinking so you aren’t destroyed by your own thoughts. Knowing who can help you think differently when having a bad day can be helpful. When we’re having a bad day, we tend to get stuck in our thoughts. Positive people or people having good days most days, will often think very differently than someone going through hardship. It’s a balance of feeling grateful, having a growth mindset, and thinking positive thoughts.
7. Take breaks as needed
If you want to avoid having a bad day, take breaks. When we push too hard or try to take on too much, we eventually feel burned out. That burnout will not only last a long time but it’ll cause us to deteriorate fast. So, take breaks often throughout your day. That means breaks at work, and breaks at home too. You don’t want to spend your whole time at home working on side hustles, doing a million errands, and managing all your other household tasks. Resting is an important part of life. It’s not all go, go, go, you know. If you want to avoid having a bad day (or a series of them), don’t forget to take breaks. You don’t deserve it or earn it, it’s simply an important part of being a balanced person.
8. Spend some time in the sun
Those Vitamin D sun rays can really do a positive number on your mood. To prevent a bad day, you can get some sunshine on nice days. Whether that means going for a mindful walk on a nice day or going to the beach for some hydrotherapy is up to you. When we feel groggier than usual, it’s often due to circadian rhythm issues, especially in those winter months. Planning a Caribbean vacation in the middle of the winter season can help combat those bad days by giving you the dose of Vitamin D that you need to last you the rest of the cold and dreary season. The sun can also improve your sleep, allowing you to get adequate rest so you feel recharged upon waking. And with better sleep, bad days become more manageable instead of dragging you down into oblivion.
9. Do a personal development activity
To avoid having a bad day, you can do activities that boost your personal development. That might mean reading books, taking online courses, meditating, playing games or instruments, or channeling your creativity into a project. To prevent a bad day, you can do activities to strengthen your brain function, rewire your brain, and improve your mood. Doing things that challenge you without draining you can help you create new neural pathways that allow you to better manage your mood. Investing in yourself to become a good person can also be an enlightening experience. If you genuinely improve aspects of yourself, you’ll be better able to manage relationships, your mood, and your life.
10. Play
If you want to know how to avoid a bad day, consider adding more time for play. Play can involve playing guitar, board games, or dancing around the house. You can inject playfulness into your day every day by dancing, making silly jokes, and trying to keep the mood light and airy. When you’re naturally trying to uplift people and yourself, it’s next to impossible to have a bad day even when things go wrong. There are hobbies that are naturally playful too, like jiu jitsu where you’ll fall or make people fall laughing all the way to the mat in practice. So, if you’re looking to inject more play into your day, try hobbies like parachuting, chess, archery, or swimming. You could also do water balloon fights in the summer or build snowmen in the winter to goof around with your friends or children.
11. Do your hobbies
To avoid having a bad day, you can do more hobbies. Often, when we don’t have hobbies, we fill our day doomscrolling on social media. And with social media being the ultimate tool of social comparison it’s no wonder why those active on it tend to feel more sad or depressed. Hobbies can enrich you by challenging you, developing you, and being more playful. Your hobbies could include photography, video games, woodworking, hiking, jewelry making, and more. Your hobbies can help you make money too if a lack of money is what causes you to have a bad day. Those with hobbies can benefit from improved mental health, lower stress levels, and better overall health.
12. Express gratitude
To avoid having a bad day, you’ll want to create a gratitude list. When you have an attitude of gratitude, you’ll tend to be happier than most people. Knowing what you’re grateful for or thinking about things you’re grateful for each day will allow you to think more glass half full. It’s true that sometimes we don’t get the things we want in life, but by seeing all the wonderful things we do have, we feel appreciative. It’s hard to have a bad day when you see all the good things life has given you. Don’t get caught up looking at what others have as comparison is the thief of joy. Look at everything you have, every clothing item, food you’ve eaten, material possessions, traits you were born with, friends, and family members. Look at everything you’ve been given or have had access to and feel grateful for those things.
13. Journal what went well
To avoid having a bad day, you can journal all the good things that happen in your life. And when bad things happen, as they sometimes do, you can journal how you’ll work to solve it and process the emotions of it. How you frame things will define how easy it is for you to get over a bad day. A mindfulness journal is all about being mindful about sharing your thoughts. You can use journal prompts to help guide you into positive thinking or reframing to help you better manage life challenges to overcome obstacles.
14. Rely on gut feelings to guide you
There are two “brains” in our body: one in our head and one in our gut. The brain in our head often leads us to unhappiness due to thinking. The gut brain is more involved in your survival, ability to feel energies, and psychic senses. When you think with your gut, more often than not, you’ll make better decisions than when you think with your head. Your thoughts can supply you with some rogue ideas now and then. Your thoughts sometimes catastrophize and exaggerate things too. So, when you learn to turn off thinking and focus on gut feeling your way through things, you’ll end up preventing most bad days.
Conclusion
Now you know how to avoid a bad day. It’s all about minimizing getting lost in thoughts that spiral you into negative thinking. Keeping your brain active with meditation, hobbies, personal development, and play can all be helpful at ensuring you enjoy your time instead of ruminating on thoughts that have a destructive impact on you. If you’d like to try meditating to help you avoid having bad days, you can try out the Declutter The Mind meditation app for free.
