There’s still time to salvage it.
When I hit midlife, I discovered that you can pull a muscle in all kinds of new ways: sneezing, parking a car. And, as I found out last week, you can tweak your back just getting out of bed.
While I hobbled to the kitchen, my phone pinged with two stomach-dropping texts (a mold-removal assessment, a friend who wanted to “talk something out”).
“This day is shot,” I grumbled.
But that’s not necessarily so, I learned from Susan Albers, a clinical psychologist at the Cleveland Clinic. Your day may start off badly, she said, whether that means a rough morning meeting, unwelcome news, or a stranger being rude. But you often have the ability, she said, to “create a different ending.”
How can you turn a bad day around quickly? I chatted with experts about a few things that can help.
Put the incident into context.
When clients tell Dr. Albers that they are having a lousy day, she often advises them to “respond, rather than react,” by stepping back from whatever prompted that thought and looking at it from a different perspective.
So if you’ve had a salty interaction with someone, reflect on a few key questions, said Michael Lee, a professor of communication and director of the Civility Initiative at the College of Charleston. Ask yourself: Is this really about me, or is it about them? How much weight do I give to their words? Does this person know my true character? What is the story I created around the thing that happened?
Putting an experience into context and analyzing your feelings can dial down stress, Dr. Lee explained.