from mind to reality

I have bad days, you have bad days, we all have bad days.

And most of the world is content to have them.

But what if you became part of the 1% that views these days differently… and gets wildly ahead?

(This is NOT one of those “be positive about everything” posts… quite the contrary!)

Let’s dive into a better way to see these days, and how they can help you seriously uplevel your life.

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“How’s it going?” my phone screen lit up with this text coming in from a friend.

I grabbed the phone and immediately started typing.

“Bad day.”

And then my thumb hovered over the send button.

“But… is it actually?” I wondered to myself.

If I wrote that, I would basically be inviting them to ask me why, cueing me listing out all the “woe is me” moments. Then I’d get validating sympathy about how the big bad world sucks and it’s not my fault.

And I’d basically write off today as useless. (Bad = no value).

And… what would I gain from that? Would my life be any better, aside from the momentary satisfaction of feeling sorry for myself?

Most certainly not.

Saying I had a “bad day” is a judgment — and one that blocks me off from gaining value from the day.

Describing days without judging them

So what if I instead described it more accurately, and non-judgmentally?

“I had some intense negative emotions today.”

Now this already sounds very different — and also allows so much room for learning, growth, and good things.

Because “negative” emotions doesn’t mean “useless” emotions or “bad” emotions and certainly not “non-valuable” emotions.

Negative emotions can teach us SO much:

• That we need to set better boundaries
• We’re out of alignment with our values
• We need to get better at communication
• That we should put distance with a certain person
• That we need to relax or we’ll burn out
• That a passion is no longer fulfilling us
• That we could have dealt with a situation better

You’ve already paid the price for the lesson. Would you really want to toss it away?

Then the universe will have no choice but to serve it up to you again… maybe with an even bigger price tag.

The negative emotions were already there. So wouldn’t you rather feel them and have something good come out of them?

That’s what this reframe is all about. Not denying that the negative emotions were there, but choosing to have them make our life better rather than worse.

Recap & action steps

• Give yourself permission to feel all the negative emotions in your day — and stick to describing your day as just that, without assigning judgments that the emotions make your day into a “bad” one.
• Negative emotions can point to extremely valuable lessons: setting better boundaries, aligning with values, who to stay away from, what mistakes not to repeat, etc. And since these lessons are often so unpleasant, you probably want to learn this lesson the first time around, so you don’t have to go through it again.
• Accept the negative emotions, and ask yourself: “What is the lesson here? What do I need to learn, so that this doesn’t repeat? Where can I find responsibility for what happened, so I have power over the outcome next time?”

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I’d love to hear from you too — what have negative emotions helped you learn? Has anything good come out of a “bad day” when you looked at it with curiosity and a growth mindset?

Tell me in the comments below!