I have a habit of waking up with a heaping amount of positivity only to check my email or think about where I’m at in my life and immediately turn to thinking: ‘This isn’t going to be a good day. Better go back to sleep.’

Now that’s a losing mindset if I’ve ever seen one.

I doubt I’m the only one who runs into this sort of issue when they’re having a tough time or are stuck in a situation that seems impossible. It’s difficult to keep yourself motivated when everything seems to be crashing down around you.

I’m sure you’ve experienced a time when everything looked like it was going to work out and then…

BAM!

The world was like ‘nope’ and you were forced to change your plans to work you way out of whatever had just gone wrong. Maybe it wasn’t something big but it was enough to irk you and make you consider just crawling back under your comforter, calling out of work for the day, and having a personal pity party.

Sound about right?

It may surprise you to know that there are those of us who have more of those ‘bad’ days than good ones. We think that any slight inconvenience is the end of the world. We battle this with every fiber of our being but some days it just takes hold of us and won’t let go.

We have to go hide under the covers.

Sure, we can do our daily ritual of telling ourselves that we are amazing and today will be a good day but that email telling us that we screwed up in this way or that can still rattle us. Call it a character flaw or whatever you want, it doesn’t negate the fact that the pure aggravation of feeling utterly vulnerable to a force outside of your control is real for us.

I’m not here to sell you on feeling bad for those of us who go through this process, I’m here to just put it out into the world to see if anyone else feels this way. I want to offer hope that things can change – that tomorrow can be better.

This week I lost out on what I thought would be a great contract opportunity and proceeded to lose focus on the work I already have. All because of an unfortunate situation that was out of my control.

No, I shouldn’t have let it happen but I did. I spent nearly an entire day in bed stressing myself out about something that I couldn’t change. It was all I could do to pull myself up for lunch and playtime before collapsing into any solid surface that would allow me to rest.

But after that day of nothingness, I told myself that I had to pull it together or everything was going to unravel. I couldn’t afford to lose the contracts that I was working on and I would have to find another opportunity to replace the one that I had lost. No one was going to be able to change this but me.

I know, in light of everything I’ve said up until now, it seems odd to put the burden of fixing things completely on yourself but if you realize that only you can change the things you’re unhappy about, you can pull yourself up and do something about it.

There was no reason for me to stay in bed for any longer. I had work to do. I had a toddler who needed my attention. I had decisions that needed to be made. There was no time to wait around any longer and hope the universe would send me the answer.

That’s not how life works.

You can’t leave your happiness up to anyone but yourself. Depending on others to keep you where you want to be in life is a recipe for disaster. Sure, it works out for some people but for most they find themselves being taken advantage of or left behind without a second thought. The one person that you should depend on is yourself. Only you know what will make you truly happy and what will stop today from being a bad day and what will make tomorrow a better one.

My best advice is to keep thinking positive thoughts and realize that you’re doing just fine. You can turn things around if you’re willing to put in the work. For now though, just focus on getting out from under the covers and thinking of today as a good day.

Wishing you all the best!

S.S.S.