The Secret Weapon for Dealing with a Mom’s Bad Day
Bad days happen.
They’re inconsiderate, pushy, and become the proverbial “squeaky wheel that gets the oil.”
No one has time for bad days, especially moms!
They catch you off guard, and body slam your day!
How many bad days do you think you’ll have in a lifetime?
One, or maybe two a month? That could be significant.
Add them up and you’ll have about 24 bad days a year… which is nearly a month.
Because of that, we should be well prepared with a secret weapon to not let bad days get the best of us.
The Secret Weapon to Dealing with a Mom’s Bad Day is… Perspective.
Perspective: to think about a situation or problem in a wise and reasonable way
Cambridge English Dictionary
A bad day might be as simple as having a “bad hair day,” or to the extreme of losing something or someone you love… and anything in between.
A normal bad day… rolls in like a fog bank, and contagiously touches everything you do.
Rolling your eyes and yelling, “OMG, what else could wrong today?” is par for the course on a mom’s bad day.
If you wake up feeling “off” a little bit, you might have the first clue that a bad day is brewing.
Coffee doesn’t seem to cure a bad day’s mojo, and navigating everything from conversations to traffic is a struggle.
A bad day might show up when your defenses are down. You might be overly tired, haven’t been eating well, or just dealing with that time of the month.
So, you chalk it up to just a bad day.
A healthy perspective tells you it’s going to end when your head hits the pillow that night.
On the other hand, an instant bad day is created by jolting news.
It may mean lifestyle changes are coming for you, and your entire family.
Getting blindsided by a divorce, a job loss, a critically ill child, the death of a loved one, or the loss of your home, are much more than just a bad day.
Those are days you’d like a total do-over, but as we all know, there aren’t any do-overs.
Instead, this is the time you need to use your secret weapon.
Perspective is Your Secret Weapon
Bad days help you appreciate what you have.
You have access to the basic necessities of life, enjoy family and friends, have good health, have your faith, have endless opportunity to do or be anything you want, have helpful neighbors and all the community support you might need.
Bad days help you value fresh starts.
The right perspective helps you decide how you’re going to start each day, regardless of how yesterday went.
It’s your choice to step out of bed on the right foot, with your head in the right space, set right intentions, use right habits, have right conversations, and choose right actions, or not.
Bad days help you remember how far you’ve come in life.
Most of us don’t have to look back very far, to see a milestone we’ve accomplished, a bump in the road we got over, and a baby step made toward one of our goals.
Even though you may not be where you want to be at the moment, you’re on your way there, one step at a time!
Bad days help you see that closed doors are as valuable as open doors.
Are you thankful that closed doors lead you to the right opportunities, relationships, and resources you need?
Maybe not at the moment, but later on you do.
You might have counted on certain doors to open for you, and they didn’t.
They weren’t supposed to, because there were other doors for you to open, discover, and go through.
And hindsight always gives you 20/20 perspective.
Bad days remind you that you are human, not perfect, and built to need each other.
Keeping a humble perspective keeps you grounded and balanced.
We all make mistakes, battle attitude, and slip with choices at moments.
Every one of us will fail each person in our life at times.
Thank goodness that we can choose to apologize and forgive.
Bad days help rivet in your mind what you want out of life, and what you’re willing to invest to get it.
The good thing about bad days is they help you streamline the things that hold you back from pursuing your purposes and passions.
Convert negative energy into fuel to invest in your goals and dreams.
Transform frustration into willpower to purge poison from your life.
Re-purpose disappointment into determination to kick a bad habit, or start a good one.
Redirect a bad day’s energy with your perspective.
Bad days help you develop a solution seeking mindset rather than a drama spinning attitude.
You can either use your energy to perpetuate drama and spin the bad day around and around, or try to end the bad mojo by finding solutions to the challenges of the day.
Double check to see that you’re not bringing on a bad day on by dwelling on past failures, unresolved pain, or situations you have no control over.
Choose to put your history in it’s proper place… like in a diary, in a counselor’s office, or on the burn pile.
Adopt the perspective that everything is a learning experience and helps you grow through mistakes, pain, and failures.
Perspective helps us see that bad days are just hiccups in the big picture.
How do you handle bad days?
Do you have a tried and true secret weapon, that helps you rebound from a bad day?
We all could use some extra insight and experience in managing our worst days… so please share your stories with us! xoxo
