Using Bad Days to Your Advantage

Bad days are a part of life. Even those of us who love our jobs are bound to experience a day when everything seems to go wrong. The best way to keep the same bad days from happening over and over again is how you react when you leave the office. Resist the urge to go home, throw yourself a pity party, and try to forget it ever happened. Instead, take the time for self- reflection and ask yourself the following questions from Kat Boogaard to stop making the same mistakes:

"1. Will This Day Have a Lasting Impact?

When your day was nothing but awful, it's easy to send yourself into a downward spiral of despair. You make mountains out of molehills and become convinced that this one brief rough patch will be the demise of your entire career and reputation. Rest assured, that's hardly ever the case- and this question will help you step back and get some much-needed perspective. 

2.  What Would You Do Differently? 

Are you the eternal winner of the blame game? I can relate. When things don't work out as planned it's easy to place all of the responsibility on your shoulders- regardless of whether you had any control over those circumstances or not. This is why it can be so helpful to identify what-  if anything- you'd do differently if you magically had a do-over of your day. 

3. What Went Well Today?

Alright, you're so wrapped in everything that went wrong that you're convinced that today was so terrible it's worthy of being the plot of a horror film. However, even the worst days have a few bright spots. Obsessing over the bad things is probably only going to send your mood into more of a nosedive. So, ask yourself this question to pull out a few of the positives."