I’ve been thinking about why things don’t derail me the way they used to, and how I have developed ways to cope with bad days.
A couple of years ago, I made a comment about how my job stresses me out sometimes. I’m an introvert. Teaching is an incredibly social job, and some days it’s a bit much for me. So I said something along those lines – and the people listening got really upset with me for complaining. They seemed to think that I meant I might as well quit.
Quite frankly, their response shocked me. Is that how most people view things?
My view is that nothing is perfect. No matter how much I love my life, there will be bad days. There will be bad times. There will be bad aspects.
Because nothing is perfect. Nothing.
I’ve learned not to believe that everything is terrible because of a bad day. I’ve learned to extend my view beyond the moment.
Learning how to cope with bad days wasn’t always something I could do. It was something I had to learn.
More Than One Anchor
I learned it by thinking of myself as being anchored to things. When something went bad, I couldn’t rely on that single anchor to keep me steady. If I had only one, I’d fall into depressive despair. But if I could anchor myself to something else, that could pull me out.
The first thing I learned was to anchor myself to the future. The past was bad, the present might not be great – but I could pull myself out by thinking about what was ahead. For me, it wasn’t just the next day; that wasn’t something I could hold onto. At the time, I was working toward changing my career to teaching, and I’d think about what life would be like once I became a teacher. Anchoring myself in that future helped keep me stable.
Then I started learning to anchor myself to different things. There’s work, yes. There are also friends. And crafts. And exercise. Now, when one thing gets rocky, I focus on another while I try to shift my footing.
I’ve been thinking about this because my health has gone downhill over the past two months. Not devastatingly so—but I’ve had a lot of long COVID flare-ups. I don’t think I’ve gone more than a week and a half without feeling sick.
This has been especially hard because it’s disrupted my exercise habits. I can tell I’ve lost fitness. And I’d been working toward a goal I really wanted—one that now feels like it may not be possible anymore.
But as unhappy as I am about my health, it isn’t tearing my world apart. Not like it would have in the past.
Why not?
Because I can focus on my other anchors. There are other things in my life that are going well. And I’m still trying to improve my health. I cooked my meals for the week—low-histamine, full of vegetables. Then I did what I could for exercise today.
So if you’re finding yourself fretting about the bad in your life, try to find something good to anchor yourself to. Don’t ignore the hard thing—take a couple of steps to improve it, pat yourself on the back, and then focus on what is going well.
And if you were like me when I started, and can’t see anything positive at all at first, focus on the future you. The you that you are becoming. Find something to hold onto that makes the fight worth it, and you will pull yourself through.
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