Having a bad day? Who doesn’t have a bad day every once in awhile.
Bad days are a universal experience, although how we handle them tends to be a little more specific. My tendency on bad days is to get angry and rage at everything and everyone in my path. In Ayurveda, we’d call that a pitta problem.
Thing is, that rage doesn’t take away my bad day or bad mood. Usually it makes it worse.
Whether a bad day makes you angry or anxious or depressed, there is actually a fairly simple way to shift that bad day energy.
In fact, there are 3 things I recommend you do and each one takes less than a minute.
The first thing you should do is move your body.
And the easiest way to do that is to do a single yoga pose.
Some of the best in a bad day situation are inversions — turning your world upside down to physically shift your energy and perspective. Inversions are anything in which your head is below your heart, so handstand is one of my favorites for that.
However, down dog is a good one, too.
So is a standing forward bend.
You could even do a cartwheel!
No matter what pose you pick, a single pose should take less than a minute and can help lift the fog of a bad day.
The second thing to do is move your mind.
This can take a few different forms. You might just take 10 slow, steady breaths.
Another option would be to close your eyes and count to 10 or 25 or 50.
Or you could sit with your eyes closed for a minute, either repeating a mantra or just allowing your mind to wander (aka meditation).
This gives you the opportunity to put some mental space between yourself and whatever is creating the bad day.
The third thing you can do is to move your soul.
The way I recommend doing this is through writing. Getting whatever it is in you that is making you feel like crap, out.
You have a couple of options here.
You can set a simple intention — how you want to feel. Something you can write out and place where you’ll see it. You could also write an action you want to take to get out of this bad day.
Alternatively, you could do some free form writing or drawing if that’s more your jam. You could also do some word association — you write one word and then whatever word forms in your mind next until a minute is up.
These 3 things — moving your body, your mind, and your soul — are the 3 things that I do when I’m having a particularly rough day.
I can’t say they fix everything. I wish I could.
They do give me the physical, mental, and energetic awareness that I don’t have to stay stuck.
These 3 things are also the fundamental elements of my free program, the POWER of ONE Challenge. Everyday you’ll do a single yoga pose, a minute of meditation, and set one intention.
These actions might seem small, but even the smallest actions can make a huge impact.
Join me in laying a small and mighty foundation of self-care that not only kicks bad days to the curb, but creates the opportunity for powerful, positive habits to follow. Sign up here.
