09 Sep How do You Rebound After a Bad Workday
Bad workday? In this blog, we have the best 2-minute tips on how to rebound from a bad workday. Just 2-minutes of your time to practice these life-changing techniques can change your perspective forever. You might find that today’s bad workday can turn around to your best workday.
As a Senior Account Executive, I have been working at Integrated Staffing for 6 years now and it has been a truly great place to work. But recently with the current state of our workplace, changing market landscape, the uncertainty of our economy and the uncertainty of our health, having a bad workday has been a common theme. Yes, I am being completely transparent right now and owning up to how I have felt for the past several months as I know many of you are going through this roller coaster of a ride.
Although we are an essential company, out of the safety of our employees, we have been working remote. For those of you not working remote, you might think, “how lucky.” To be honest, it has been exhausting, particularly when you have kids at home. You tend to work early in the morning, late at night, and weekends until it becomes a blend of work and personal life. You seem to work harder, so that you can prove that you are working.
I, also, recently adopted a 4-month-old puppy to add more stress to the picture. Now, I am facing the challenge of kids going back to school hybrid (2 days at schools and 3 days remote learning), returning to the office, and dealing with a fractured arm (my right arm no less).
Can some of you relate? So how can you turn a bad day into a better day? Or how can you turn a series of bad days into great days?
It’s not always easy keeping calm at work or at home, especially when you’re facing a very demanding day. In fact, it truly is one of the worst feelings to come home after a rough day or a long shift and just feel completely burnt out or riled up because of something that happened during work hours. And not all of us know how to bounce back from a bad day at work by simply putting our feet up, you know? Sometimes it takes a real self-care plan and some mental or emotional tools to really lift us out of that bad-work-day fog.
But the truth is, and this is really important for anyone that’s ever had a bad day, is that you’re the one making it worse. You’re playing tricks on yourself. You’re causing yourself to have an even worse day than you really are.
We all make mistakes. We all have things happen to us like our cars breaking down, waking up late, or spilling coffee on our shirt. It’s how we handle those situations that make us who we are.
It’s quite easy to get yourself into a bad mood to have a bad day or even a bad week. Practicing resilience is an art and required on these bad days to help us get through it.
One of our favorite mental habits at Integrated Staffing is something that takes 2 minutes a day that we discovered a few years ago from “Find the Fire – Find Your Inspiration and Make Work Exciting Again” by Scott Mautz. Scott Mautz has been a leader, entrepreneur, small business owner, and employee over the course of a 30-year career. He suggests taking two minutes at the end of a tough day to say to yourself and reflect upon these two sentences.
1. “Life is 10 percent what happens to you and 90 percent how you react to it.”
According to Scott Mautz, this is a quote from author Charles Swindoll that he first discovered when he was a young leader and it resonated so much the he printed the quote out and taped it to his office door. Well, I followed suit and posted this saying on a board in my home office as I lost sight of this incredible and useful habit.
According to an article that Scott Mautz published in Inc. on November, 16, 2019, he says, “What makes reflecting on this thought so powerful is that it immediately reminds you that how you view the day’s events is a choice. Your choice. You can imbue it with a sense of positivity, recovery, and helpful perspective or spiral downward.
Here’s a trick, when you’re lamenting about what went wrong, crystalize in your mind two distinct choices you have for how to view it. Here are some examples:
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- Did the day weaken you to the point of ruin or make you stronger in some ways?
- Did the day cause irreparable damage or was it a minor setback you can recover from?
- Did the day cause others to truly doubt you or merely you to doubt yourself?
- Did the day highlight what a complete loser you are or simply that you’ve gotten a gift–something you can work on to improve?
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You get the idea. Forcing granularity of two choices at opposite ends of the spectrum forces you to see there are two choices, at opposite ends of the spectrum. You’ll instinctively want to migrate to the positive end.
2. “It’s gratitude that turns what we have into enough, and more.”
This is a shortened version of a quote from author Melody Beattie and it’s step-two, the second minute of this two-minute habit. It’s all about acknowledging that, sure, not everything went right in your day. But enough did to remind you that you are enough. And that you have enough.
Give yourself another 10 seconds to grieve for the day you had then turn the tables to think of all the things you have to be thankful for about your day (and in your life for that matter). I’ve found that no matter what your day was lacking, no matter what went wrong, it’s impossible to feel as bad about it when you view it stacked up next to the profoundness of all you have to be appreciative for. It’s an instant reframing.” (source: https://www.inc.com/scott-mautz/this-2-minute-mental-habit-can-help-you-rebound-from-a-tough-day-at-work.html)
So, if you take just two-minutes to practice these life-changing habits, your bad workday might turn into a successful, productive, stress-free day. We have found out at Integrated Staffing that these 2-minute practices, can change your whole week. I had to remind myself that it was time to practice these habits again. In fact, I tend to do these 2-minute exercises on my lunch break, so I can change it around earlier than later in the day, and again at the end of the day.
At Integrated Staffing, our mission is to help the workforce succeed at their career, job, and life as a whole. Not only do we provide job opportunities, but also provide solutions and resources to be the best possible YOU, you can be. Each day of life is a learning experience and we believe that intentional learning, implementing, practicing, and executing habits, techniques, and strategies are how we succeed in life. But it requires hard work, patience, consistency, and authenticity.
If you do continue to have a bad workday (because it’s just not the right fit) and looking for a change, call Integrated Staffing at 518-583-7823 and find out how we might be able to help you find a job opportunity that leads you to 95% great work days and maybe only 5% of bad work days (as we all experience them at some point).