So you’ve had a bad day?  Your big launch didn’t get the sales that you wanted, your customer has decided that they no longer want to work with you, your tax bill is bigger than you had budgeted for or you’ve had a less than shiny review left on your Facebook page… And maybe you’re not sure how to cope with bad days.

How to cope with bad days

It happens.  You know that only saying, the only things guaranteed in life are death and taxes?  Well if you are a business owner then the other thing that is guaranteed is that you’ll have bad days.  Lots of bad days.  

You’ll have great days as well – and I’m sure you’ll have far more great days than bad.  

But the ones you’ll remember are the bad days.  Unfortunately, that’s the way it goes.  No matter how many amazing reviews your book gets on Amazon, the one you’ll remember is the negative one.  

Is that familiar?

So, now that we’ve accepted that bad days are guaranteed and that they’ll happen more than you want them to – you need to know that it’s not all doom and gloom.  There are definitely ways that you can get over the bad days, you just need to know the tricks.

So here are my favourite ways to get motivated on the bad days (note I have bad days as much as anyone else, bad days don’t get any less the more successful you get.  And I don’t always bounce back as quickly as I’d like – I’m only human – but these are my tried and tested ways to keep going when times are tough).

Focus on the positive

Every time something good happens, celebrate it.  The more you can recognise and celebrate your wins the less important the bad days will seem.  You don’t have to celebrate in any extravagant way, just maybe a text to a friend when you get a new customer or treat yourself to a bubble bath and glass of wine if you achieve the goals you set yourself one day.  Maybe keep a list of all the good things that happen that you can read back when you have a bad day?

Gratitude 

The energy of being grateful is one of the most positive you can get into.  Some people like to write a list of 100 things every day that they are grateful for and others swear by choosing one big thing that happened every day that you are grateful for.  Try it, you’ll be impressed at how it changes things in your life.

Allow yourself time to wallow 

You can’t be expected to enjoy problems and you are allowed to feel sorry for yourself when something goes wrong.  It’s a mourning process.  Think about what went wrong, whether you could have done anything differently and what you’re going to change next time to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Set yourself a limit on feeling upset, give yourself an hour or a day or as long as it takes and when that time is up – you stop and move on.

There is no magic answer to a bad day, it’s just one of those things that you have to learn to get through.  I promise it gets easier in time!