(Photo by E.L.A, best cat photo ever)
We have all been there. The days when you roll out of bed and look at the clock, think about the days offerings, and simply want to curl back into a ball and do absolutely nothing. I don’t care if your Tony Robbins, Oprah Winfrey, Brad Pitt, or some other seemingly endlessly happy person that appears to have rainbows coming out of their ass 24/7, everyone has crappy days. While many people will simply try and motivate you and tell you how, “everything is going to be awesome”, that is, if you start thinking positively you will change your focus and realign the space time continuum and turn your day around in an instant. While that certainly is possible, chances are you are not experiencing one of the types of days I mentioned and are simply experiencing a day where you are choosing to be a lazy bum instead of a productive workhorse.
I would like to touch on how to tackle these full crap days and how to make the most of them. I will not be motivating you by telling you that everything is going to be alright, nor will I tell you to repeat some stupid mantra about how you are awesome and you can do anything. I simply want to share with you some advice that is realistic and not shitty.
What better what to get over a shitty day than with no bullshit advice?
So you are looking at your office monitor, lying in bed staring at the alarm, loafing around your house trying not to attack the amazing ice cream sandwiches left over in your fridge (oh you already ate them, never mind then), and you realize that today just feels off. You don’t really have any desire to do much, you may be feeling a little bit down and out, lazy, tired, hung-over, or any combination of the smorgasbord that is a shitty day, but at the end of the day, you just are not feeling up for anything in life, let alone doing something that day.
So what do you do? Do you jump around the room like a raving lunatic and attempt to change your mood through some tribal dance? Do you read some motivational words? Do you sit and eat an entire tub of Hagan Das ice cream in order to sooth your post party hangover? While all of those are stereotypical ideas for getting out of a bad day, I suggest something a bit less conventional.
Embrace the crappy day
That’s right, accept fully that this day is going to be full on shit and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. Now I know what you are thinking, “What kind of shit advice is that?” “How long has he been high and where can I get some?” The bottom line is that it is perfectly acceptable to have a few shitty days once in a while, days where you just feel like doing nothing. Lounge around the house like a champ, feel sorry for yourself, do whatever it is you do on your off days that fulfill your dreary fantasy lifestyle. By accepting that your day is over before it has already begun, you are essentially at ground zero for your day. There is no floor to your day because you are already lying on the ground, and as depressing as it sounds on paper you might even enjoy it a little bit.
When you accept that the day is over and full shit, then there is literally no other place you can go than up.
Does this mean your day might continue on as per its crap schedule and you and your day will remain the same? Definitely a possibly. Does this mean that you will realize this and start to lift yourself up right then and seize the day by saving a cat from a tree or some other feat of awesomeness? Maybe, and maybe you will take baby steps towards making something of your day. You might just clean the bathroom that is currently being attacked by every type of bacteria known to man, or grab one of the dumb self books that you said you would eventually get around to reading and flip through a few pages. What do you have to lose? Isn’t your day is already shitty?
Whether you do something and get out of a rut or let your day drag on into the bowels of hell, it doesn’t really matter (unless you stay in hell for more than a day or so 😉 ). The key is that you recognized that those shitty days are the worst they are going to get, and despite your low and pessimistic viewpoints, your lack of motivation, your unsightly appearance and smell from lack of bathing, you know that you at your worst is just that, the shittiest it can ever get.
In the future you will be able to use days just like this one as a reference for some self motivation on those days that are a bit off and where laziness is king rather than self loathing or a full blown vegetable state of mind. You will be able to look back and say, “Man that shitty day was awful; I don’t really want to get back to eating my way through my fridge and watching the entire Friends box set.” You will earn some leverage to pushing yourself a small amount, or even a big amount towards tackling your next big thing.
Because you know you aren’t going to feel like this forever
So embrace this craptastic day, reach out for the comfort food, lie around in the most artful positions, realize that you too can watch the entire lord of rings and star wars collections in one sitting and be the envy of all of your friends. Because in the future, you know that days just like this will be fire under your ass when you simply aren’t making the good shit happen in your life
Embrace the shit
Gabriel
And if you’re having a Ninja day, break boards!! 🙂
Great post, my man. Was having a bit of a stupid day the other day and said okay today will be stupid and tomorrow will be awesome, and it was. it’s okay to have a “bad” day once in awhile. it’s a balance thing. keep it real.
I was able to look past the many spelling and grammar errors, thinking that maybe I needed advice from someone less uptight than myself. But when I got to “feet of awesomeness,” I just couldn’t go on. So my advice to you is if you’re serious about turning this into a career, you should reread your post at least once 😉
@Brian
Well said. Not every day is going to a trip down candyland, its best to get some perspective and grow with the tough times as much as the good. Thanks for the input mate.
@Justin
I did notice I had a few more grammatical errors in this post than as per usual, and this is likely due to the fact that I had an full blown mental shutdown just prior to posting this. I normally put a post into a semi “grammar check” mode prior to posting, but for some reason I was distracted by other things going on today, or maybe just the cat picture I found for this article. I have made some changes and hope that you will reread the article with a new point of view.
PS. awesomeness and many of the other words I use are not real words, I know this but I use them because it is my writing style and I love the way they look on paper 😉
Thanks for the constructive criticism
Haha, I didn’t have a problem with “awesomeness,” it was the “feet” part that was ridiculous. I’m not sure how you don’t read that as the feet we walk on, but something you might achieve is a feat.
I wonder if Oprah ever will do anything else than TV.
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I love this one 🙂