Having a Bad Day?

Have you ever had one of those days when you just wake up in a bad mood? As soon as you open your eyes, something irritates you? There aren’t many things that can go wrong within the first 5 seconds of you opening your eyes but, if you’re going to have that kind of day, you’ll find something; usually ‘why did I have to wake up so bloody early?!’

Once your day has started like that it will seem almost as though God has decided that you and you alone will be the target of his wrath. He won’t visit plagues of frogs upon you but he will make sure that it’s raining when you leave for work, He’ll hide your umbrella and make damn sure that any parking spaces even remotely close to your office will magically disappear or be filled with teeny, tiny cars that you only notice at the last minute.  All of these things will, of course, irritate you intensely and leave you utterly convinced that, whatever happens today you’re going to feel miserable and horribly victimised by an all knowing deity who obviously has nothing better to do.

All of this, if you think rationally for a few minutes is complete and utter nonsense, it’s just a series of completely unconnected, random events which you certainly can’t blame God [insert deity of your choice] for; he’s busy and doesn’t have time to hide your umbrella!

The problem is, when we are in this sort of mood the last thing we’ll do is to think rationally so, instead, we tend to focus on all things things that are ‘going wrong’ and we tell everyone who is courageous enough to come and speak to us that we’ll be glad when today is over. When I say courageous – have you felt confident about going over to speak to someone who is huffing and puffing every 5 minutes, has a permanent scowl on their face and has just performed unspeakable acts of violence on their stapler?

As most of us aren’t saints we tend to steer clear of people who are obviously in a bad mood lest we become the brunt of their ill humour. Unfortunately, for the one who is suffering all this mental anguish, this exacerbates the situation. Not only are they having the day from hell but all their colleagues seem to be ignoring them or, worse, whispering about them behind their back! Could this day get any worse?!?!

At this point there are usually 2 roads forward, one is to storm out of the office in a complete huff and take refuge in the toilet for the next 30 minutes (which will obviously result in more whispering and perhaps the odd surreptitious point here and there) or we find a target for our anger and have a go at someone (possibly the same person that we’d enjoyed a muffin and a skinny late with yesterday). Either way we will certainly not end up feeling any better.

All of these negative feelings have stemmed from the same place – we woke up feeling as though we were going to have a battle on our hands today and, surprise, surprise that’s exactly what happened. To a certain degree our thoughts are a self-fulfilling prophecy – if you tell yourself that you will have a bad day, that’s, more often than not, exactly what you will end up having. In the contrary way of human beings we will even sometimes ignore the repeated efforts of our loved ones to cheer us up in order to make sure that we were right about our prediction for the day.

So, my advice is, the next time you wake up in a bad mood or you are sad for no reason that you can fathom just accept it. Don’t prepare yourself for a battle with God and the rest of the world, just say to yourself: “I’m in a bad mood, it won’t last forever” or “I can’t stop crying but it’s just for now, it will pass” It may be just me but I find that my black mood passes a lot quicker than if I fight against it……… and everything else. The added bonus is that, although my friends and family may see me with a scowl or tears on my face for a little while they won’t spend all day cowering behind the furniture while I search for something to throw at them.

Whatever mood you woke up in this morning, I hope you still manage to have a beautiful day – after all, we never know how many more we’ll have to look forward to :O)