What the Experts Say
The good news is you can turn a bad day into a good one. “Happiness is a choice,” says Shawn Achor, author of The Happiness Advantage.
Even when something objectively negative happens—your star employee
gives notice or you’re late to an important meeting with the CEO—it’s
important to focus on the positive things that are also happening. “Studies show
that when you’re positive, you’re 31% more productive, you’re 40% more
likely to receive a promotion, you have 23% fewer health-related effects
from stress, and your creativity rates triple,” he explains. Discontent
is also contagious, adds Annie McKee, founder of the Teleos Leadership
Institute and coauthor of Primal Leadership.
“Your negative emotions spread like wildfire,” she says. “It’s worth
changing your mood, not just to make your day more pleasant and
productive but to spare those around you.” So what can you do when
you’re in a downward spiral? Here are some ideas:
Pinpoint the problem
The earlier you catch your bad mood,
the easier it will be to do something about it. “We have to have early
warning signals that tell us that our resilience is dwindling,” says
McKee. She recommends pausing regularly to check your emotional state.
“Perhaps you’re being snappy with people, you’re not smiling as much, or
you have a headache,” she says. It’s also important to pinpoint and
name what’s going on. It’s better to say, “I’m upset because I’m behind
on an important project and traffic was terrible today,” rather than the
over-simplified, “I feel awful,” McKee says. Having a concrete reason
for your unhappiness gives you something to work on.
Take a moment to be grateful
One
of the simplest ways to focus on the positive is to think about what
you’re grateful for, whether it’s your job, your kids, or the clothes on
your back. “There are neuroimaging studies that show it’s almost
impossible to be in a depressed state and grateful at the same time,”
explains Achor. McKee agrees that gratitude is “a powerful antidote to
the urgent feeling of stress and lack of control.” So as soon as you
start to feel negative, short circuit your mood by asking yourself, What are three good things that are going on right now?
Consider saying them out loud or writing them down. This will help you
get some perspective on the bad day. Sure, you may have had a fender
bender or missed an appointment, but there are other, perhaps more
important, things in your life that are going well.
Take action
Another
way to stop yourself from “trending negative” is to “take a single
concrete action,” Achor says. Send that email that you’ve been meaning
to get to or make a phone call you’ve been dreading. Even choosing a
healthier snack, a piece of fruit over a candy bar, can create a
positive “mental avalanche” for the rest of the day. “Your brain records
a victory,” Achor explains. The effect is even stronger if the action
you take benefits someone else. You might be buried in your inbox, but
if you take two minutes to send an email praising or thanking someone
else, you’ll actually feel like you’ve gained time.
Change your routine
If
you’re feeling miserable, don’t hunker down at your desk for the rest
of the day. A change of scenery often helps signal to your brain that
the current mood doesn’t need to be sustained. “Drive around, take a
walk, or just go to a different floor. The key is to put yourself in a
different physical location,” McKee advises. And once you’re there, take
a few deep breaths. “If you’re heading for or already in an amygdala hijack, you have to do something to get control of your frontal lobe and breathing does that physiologically,” she explains.
You
can also do something you enjoy, like listening to music or a podcast
or catching up on news. Just be careful about the content you choose! A recent study
by Achor in partnership with Arianna Huffington showed that just a few
minutes of consuming negative news can cause a bad day. “Try to find a
news outlet that focuses on solutions. Or at least create a different
ratio. If you’re going to read a negative piece, read two positive ones
as well, about medical breakthroughs or someone helping others,” says
Achor.
Reset realistic expectations
“Expectations
can have a huge impact on mood,” says Achor. “If I expect my flight to
be canceled and it’s only three hours delayed, then I’m going to be
thrilled. But if I expect it to be on time and then it’s delayed, then
I’m going to be upset.” A lot of bad days start when you have
unrealistic expectations about what you can accomplish. If your mood is
deteriorating because it’s after lunch and you feel behind, don’t
despair. “You can rewrite the narrative on the day,” he says. Highlight
what progress you have made. “Write down two or three things you’ve
already done. You woke up, you had breakfast with your kid, you drove to
work, you even wrote a checklist. That way you’re starting at 25%
progress.” And then make a list of “short, attainable goals” for the
rest of the day.
Learn from your bad days to prevent future ones
When
you do have bad days, it’s important to reflect on them before you put
them behind you. By taking note of what went wrong—and then right—you
can “learn what your triggers are so you stay away from those particular
stimuli or at least know how you’re likely to react if you’re
triggered,” McKee says. If you’ve tried the above strategies, make a
note of what works for you and what doesn’t, and “be more precise in the
future in how you turn things around.” And definitely pay attention
when bad days pile up. Is there something bigger going on that you need
to address? Is there some broader action you need to take? “We’re seeing
a movement toward higher workloads and longer work hours and there’s lots of research that shows that when people work more than 55 hours a week, engagement and happiness levels plummet,” says Achor. Consider whether you need to fundamentally rethink the way you do your job or balance your work and family life.
Principles to Remember
Do:
- Think of three things that you’re grateful for
- Consider what you’ve already accomplished even if it’s minor
- Reflect on what triggers your bad days and which tactics help to turn them around
Don’t:
- Believe that you are a victim of your circumstances—you choose whether to be negative or positive
- Hunker down at your desk—change scenery and take a few deep breaths
- Set unrealistic expectations for your day
Case study #1: Focus on opportunities not problems
Kate Hanley, a mindset coach and the author of A Year of Daily Calm,
often helps her clients develop strategies to get out of their bad
days. “People come to me because they’re feeling stuck and they’ve tried
everything they know how to try,” she says.
She
usually starts by asking them what triggered their negative mood. “I
try to get them to pinpoint where it started to go bad,” she says.
“Naming it can be really helpful.”
Then
she advises her clients to “get curious” and ask a lot of questions
about what is going on. Is this a one-time event or an ongoing trend?
Have I felt like this before? What caused it last time? “We’ve evolved
to scan for danger so once you’re in a bad mood, it can be hard to get
out,” she says.
She
also tries to get people to reframe problems as opportunities. If an
important client meeting gets canceled, what can you do with that free
hour? If a direct report doesn’t do a good job on a presentation, how
can you help her learn from the situation?
Kate
uses these same tactics when she’s having her own bad days. A few weeks
back, she noticed she was in an awful mood around lunchtime and quickly
identified the cause: two clients had canceled on her that morning. “I
don’t like when my appointments get moved a lot because it screws up the
rhythm of my day,” she says.
“My
mind quickly made a trend out of it but I pulled back and asked myself,
‘Do clients cancel a lot or is it just today?’” With that perspective,
she was able to think more positively. She also took a few moments to
get out of the office and do something she enjoys—listen to music. “If
you ever see me driving around in my car listening to classical, you
know it’s been a crazy day.”
Case study #2: Remember it’s just one day
Darin
Freitag, who manages residential and commercial projects at the general
contractor RYAN Associates says that he can usually tell early on in a
day when things are going wrong. “It starts when I receive a phone call
from an angry client or I realize that an important project isn’t going
to be done on time,” he says. Then “I’m distracted so I’m not thinking
clearly and I make more mistakes, like speeding into work and getting a
ticket or even backing my car into something.”
That’s
when he takes a step back. “I tell myself, ‘OK, something’s going on
here. I’m just not in a place where I’m going to win today.” To get
himself back into the right frame of mind, his first step is to get some
perspective. “I think about how this is just one day in the long haul
of a career, or a project, or the business,” he explains.
He
reminds himself that it’s normal to have a rough patch here and there
and that he can’t solve every problem. “Like many people, I often have
this grandiose idea that I’m so important that I can fix anything. But
that’s just not true. And if I try to fix it all, it’s just going to get
worse,” he says. So he temporarily resets his expectations for the day.
“Sometimes I need to lower my standards and be more realistic,” he
says.
He
remembers one day when he had to give a presentation. Not only did he
feel unprepared but there were also technical problems with the
projector. But instead of getting frustrated, he took a deep breath and
told himself, “OK, this is not going to go as well as I hoped or
planned.”
Over
time, he’s learned that, while he can’t stop bad things from happening,
he can control how he responds to them. “I know I’m going to be
miserable until I change my perspective, or accept the situation,” he
explains. “I can wallow for a while but it’s not fun and it just leads
to depression. I eventually realize that I’m swimming upstream and that I
need to stop swimming and just float. And then usually it doesn’t take
long for the situation to change.”
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