How To Get Through A Sh*tty Day

Self-Help

We all have our off days. When things aren't going the way you had planned, what do you do to pull yourself out of it?

By Molly Burford

Updated 7 hours ago, November 22, 2024

Wondering what to do when your day goes from bad to worse?

In this excerpt from my book, Moments to Hold Close, I show you the numerous ways, large and small, that you can pull yourself out of a slump. Of course, it’s easier said than done, but your wondrous self deserves to have a proverbial life preserver on these days.

This is how you heal when you’re having a bad day:

Greet the aching like an old friend and truly hear what the pain has to say. Pay attention. Remember you can’t heal what you don’t acknowledge even stings. Feel the bruising. Sit within the tenderness. Describe the hurt, even if it’s in a language only you can understand. Call it what it is. Name your heaviness, your despair, your stolen hope. Begin to unravel that weight, that sinking feeling, that hollow faith by allowing it all to exist exactly as you feel it. Slowly learn to live with the haunting. Realize we all have ghost stories that keep us awake at night. Talk about yours with loved ones. Listen to theirs. Laugh as you discover you were never as alone as you thought you were. See glimmers of your robbed convictions. Realize that maybe you’ll never be who you used to be, that sometimes this life takes the best of you and there’s nothing you can do about that fact but build anew. Start your blueprints for constructing a better tomorrow. Feel uncertain you can even create something beautiful. Try like hell to do so anyway.

To read more creative essays and poems like this one, check out Moments to Hold Close by Molly Burford.