How To Deal With The Worst Day Ever

If you function and thrive based on routine, any sort of bump in the road can end up constituting as a contender for the worst day ever. But some days are just a sequence of really terrible and irritating things that just put off your routine so much that calling it The Worst Day Ever is the only way to describe it. I had what felt like the worst day ever yesterday, but by the end of the day, I just had to laugh about it. There is no way for me to tell the tale of TWDE without rambling, but it was awful and stressful and turned a good eyebrow day into a day that made me want to scream and cry and stress eat a lot of pancakes. Sometime after dinner, I decided that being frustrated was making everything worse. If you're anything like me and try to avoid feeling stressed at all costs, here are some ways to turn the worst day ever into a somewhat decent day, or at least get through it without tears being shed.

1. Try to remember that it could almost be worse. It's usually really annoying when people tell you this, but for the sake of your sanity, just tell yourself that something worse could have happened. If you can't think of anything, just make it up. Faking it until you make it sometimes is the only simple option. 

2. Breathe. I spent most of my day huffing and puffing and screaming into pillows and just generally not taking a second to sit down and relax. Take a second to step back, remove yourself from whatever situation you might be dealing with, and take a deep breath. Take two deep breaths, even! Try to level yourself and calm yourself down. 

3. Soul food. I saw that my dining hall was having breakfast for dinner, so I went for it and loaded my plate. Sure, stress eating is probably really awful for you and this is probably terrible advice, but my roommate and I felt infinitely better after indulging in French toast, pancakes, and sausage. To each their own, I suppose. If your favorite food is pizza, get yourself a slice or two! If you like Mexican food, head on over to Chipotle or at least fix yourself from chips and salsa. 

4. Turn to work. I just threw myself into work to distract myself from the situation at hand. I did some schoolwork, wrote this blog post, and did a lot of reading. I just wanted to keep my mind off of TWDE and onto something more productive. There's nothing worse than wasting precious time dwelling on the fact that the day was a bust. 

5. Reward system. I use the reward system for everything and it'll probably lose its effect at some point, but for now the idea of buying myself something nice (even if it doesn't actually happen) got me through the day. Tell yourself that you can get a coffee the next day or buy a new top or handbag over the weekend on a shopping extravaganza. It doesn't have to be a massive piece, just something that you feel like you deserve after going through hell. 

6. Rant away your frustrations. Generally, I'm pretty optimistic, so for my roommates to see me stressed and angry was strange for me. I apologized profusely for the first hour of my frustration and I totally gave up suppressing my real feelings. I was angry and stressed to the max and I voiced it. Not bottling up those negative feelings was probably the best thing I could have done for myself, besides stuff my face with breakfast food. 

7. Remember, it's just one day. It's 24 crappy hours, and that's all. You can wake up the next morning and shake off the previous days afflictions.