How to Turn A Bad Day into A Good Day
We all have bad days.
Some days, you feel less happy, less satisfied, less accomplished, and overall less good about yourself. This is an exhausting and stressful experience — and one that can negatively impact the coming days, weeks, or even years of your life.
To overcome this negative spiral, I developed a simple four-step method to make any bad day better.
This is how.
Step 1: Think of the day as consisting of individual parts
Days are not mere stretches of hours.
They consist of a morning, afternoon, evening, and night. When you think about your time awake like this, you become less likely to allow the disappointing aspects of one part of the day to bleed out onto the rest. In your mind, the day becomes separated into different, individual parts — and thus, a bad morning does not need to connect to a bad afternoon or evening.
By thinking of the day like this, you give yourself more than one chance at a happiness each day.
Step 2: Do the one thing that would make the day a success
One action can change an entire day.
The best way to improve yours through one act is by doing what Gary Keller calls the One Thing: the most important task that you need or want to get done. This can be anything from finishing your essay to going out with your partner to cleaning the garage. As long as the action is meaningful and impactful to you, it will change your entire experience of the day.
Do this one thing, and your day becomes an instant success.
Step 3: Focus on things that energize you
Your energy level can determine the quality of your day.
With more energy, you get more fun or important things done. Therefore, before you do something, ask yourself this question by Ali Abdaal: “Will this energize or drain me?” By doing only what energizes and inspires you, or otherwise makes you feel accomplished and happy, you prime yourself to enjoy your day to the fullest.
In other words, choose to do things that give you energy to keep going.
Step 4: Keep a logbook to recount the positive aspects of your day
Use a logbook like this:
· Every day, write down what you did that day
· Every once in a while, look back at the best things that happened each day
We tend to pay too little attention to the nicer things in life. Keeping a logbook forces you to find this light in the darkness. It allows you to remember the positive aspects of your day and to look forward to the next one — and as Austin Kleon writes in Steal Like An Artist, “[to keep] track of how far your ship has sailed.”
Moments of past happiness can make any present or future day seem much more hopeful.
And with these memories in mind, you can proceed to the next day with more excitement and anticipation than before.
