Bad days—we all have them from time to time, when nothing seems to go right and everything appears to be against us. For me, these days are generally made up of one crappy thing that leads into the next until I find myself in a tailspin and holding on for dear life until closing time.
The next time a bad day threatens your happiness at work (or anywhere else) follow this prescription and knock it out before it can take hold.
A) Stay Present
No matter what happens, stay in the moment. That means not worrying about what kind of day you would have had if this thing (whatever it is) wasn’t happening. That’s the past. It also means not worrying what might happen next. That’s the future. Consider this: From where you sit in this moment, you cannot reach out and touch the past or the future. Neither the past nor the future exists from our present moment perspective. Yet we tend to live in one or the other most of the time. The present is all we have. And it is from the present moment that we draw our power. It is where our happiness resides.
“Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net”.
B) Make Another Choice
Step back from the situation and use all that “present-moment energy” to choose how you wish to handle this event instead of simply reacting. But this isn’t simply any choice. This choice is one that declares nothing is more important than your happiness. Understand that you may not be able to control everything that happens in your life, but you can control how you respond to events. You can make the choice not to give an event any happiness-robbing energy. We give negative events energy in four ways:
1) Talking and complaining about them.
2) Regretting them.
3) Blaming ourselves for them.
4) Worrying if they will happen again.
All of the above are choices that pull those undesirable events from the past, where they belong, back into the present. Once there, they once again have the power to steal your happiness.
C) Slow Down
Take a breath. Step back from the situation for a moment to give yourself the chance to see it for what it “was” –something that has already happened. It’s already in the past. All you have to do is leave it there. If you slow down, you may be surprised to see just how much power a moment has.
“Image courtesy of Evgeni Dinev/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net”.
The next time something threatens your happiness remember these three little things: 1) Stay Present. 2) Make Another Choice. 3) Slow Down.
If you like this post, I’d love to hear from you. Please like it on Facebook or leave a comment. My other posts on this subject can be found at www.troyproache.com. My Happy Workplace (the book) is available at Amazon on Kindle and in paperback.
Thanks for visiting
Troy