My first blog post on my first legit website and I have a confession…Last week I had a bad day. Like a really bad day. It was the kind of day where my family and friends knew that they needed to steer clear. The kind of day where I would have loved to have steered clear of my own self. Alas, I was stuck with my own self and had to figure my way through it.
Thankfully enough a friend shared with me a video that was super helpful for me the morning after my really bad day to get back on track. It helped. A lot. Simply because I am a ‘Word of Affirmations’ guy. But I was still feeling a little weird the day before, I still felt as though I may have projected some ‘not so lovely’ feelings I was personally dealing with. It was just that I was in one of those rare days where my “self-care toolkit” or my “Morning Routine” just wasn’t going to work.
I want to share with you why I gave myself permission to just have the bad day — in case it may be helpful for you at some point.
Because I am fortunate to have many self-care tools that I have cultivated over the years, and (usually) the space to be able to use them when I need them, I am often able to check in and turn around a day that’s getting away from me. It is a pretty long list, however whenever I sense a dat going sideways of that it’s a ‘bad day’ I will turn to some of these things in my toolkit:
1. Walking around the block
2. Meditation
3. Dancing
4. Take a nap
5. Write about what the fuck is going on
6. Intense Stretching Session / Yoga
7. Take a shower (my favorite)
8. Coloring/Painting
9. Go for a Walk or Hike
10. Give myself space to cry
There are many more self-care tools than the list above, but you can get a sense of the many different outlets where the negative energy can flow and dissipate.What I have learned about myself, though, is that there comes a point where I have tried enough to turn around a bad day and it’s time to just allow it to be what it is, and more importantly, to allow myself to just be with it for now. So on that day, after trying several things on the list above and a few others that aren’t listed, I sensed that it was time to just give myself permission to have a bad day and not need to fix it. It was going to be a “fucked-up, I-can’t-believe-this shit, of-all-people-it-just-had-to-be-me” day and I needed to accept that.
If I didn’t, I knew that before long I was going to be getting to a place where I was trying to force myself to be or feel in a way that just wasn’t going to work for me. When I get to that point I always make things worse for myself because that’s when I start to add the stories about why I should be feeling better…which inevitably leads to me feeling like shit shit (so bad, ya gotta say it twice).
On reflection, I see that the self-care tools I used that day actually did help me to have a less “fucked-up, I-can’t-believe-this shit, of-all-people-it-just-had-to-be-me” day, BUT STILL…..it was not a good day. The gift that I gave myself was the permission to not be OK. To not force myself into a place I just couldn’t be in at the time. To sit with the hard and yucky feelings of a bad day and trust that I would find my way through it when it was the right time.
I’m not advocating for you to hide your own self-care toolkit on hard days. In fact, quite the opposite…pull that hoe out and take care of yourself! Just know and allow for that point when you’ve done your best to take care of yourself and turn around your day and now it’s time to just sit with the hard, bad day.
You’ve had bad days. I’ve had bad days. We all have bad days. You don’t have to make it anything different than what it is. You’re allowed to have bad days and still be perfectly loveable and worthy. Be kind and generous with your own self and your needs and know that the fucked up days will pass without you forcing them to do so. Just Allow and give yourself permission. Peace.