Four Steps for a Better Day
Earliest morning is a time for quiet reflection. A cup of hot coffee, steam spiraling above it. A flickering candle casting a glow into the dark corners of the room. Quiet jazz floating through the still rooms of my house. Wrapping myself in a blanket, journal in front of me at the kitchen table, deciding what the day will bring.
These moments of peace are everything to me. They ease my soul into the day, they open my heart up to the possibilities of the world. Which sounds big and grand, and it is. Deciding what my day will bring adds up – to weeks and months and years lived with intention and purpose. As my own life coach Tonya Leigh says, a well-lived life is simply a collection of well-lived days.
Deciding what my day will bring goes deeper than simply reviewing my calendar or making a to do list. In fact, my to-do list is generally the last thing I look at. Instead, my focus is on me. Who will I be? How will I show up? What will I do in order to ensure that the best version of me shows up to face the challenges of the day?
“But Charlotte,” you might be saying, “I don’t know what all is going to happen to me today! I don’t know if someone will cut me off in traffic, or if my unreasonable boss is going to criticize me in front of everyone! I’ll have to be angry, or upset, or hurt then!”
And if you said that, I might smile knowingly at you and respond that those are exactly the sorts of scenarios that we’re preparing for when we decide what our day will be.
Because – and bear with me here – the day you have is not based on what happens to you, but rather in how you respond to it. The stories you tell about the circumstances of your life.
If you spend your day reacting, allowing yourself to be buffeted around by the people, places and things around you, you are giving all your precious power away.
If you let every person who cuts you off send you into a rage, if you let your boss tear down your confidence, if you let the news yank joy out of your grasp, you are putting the quality of your life in the hands of people who do not know you, do not care about you, and do not have your best interests at heart. If you let a critical remark from a parent or spouse send you into a spiral, you hanging your emotional well-being on the behavior of others. And as much as we might wish it were different, we cannot control other people.
“But Charlotte,” I can practically hear you say, “It’s only natural to be upset about those sorts of things!”
Perhaps, if the person cutting you off did it deliberately, it might be worth a moment of irritation.
In my experience, most people don’t allow it only a moment of irritation though. They lose their temper, shout at the other car, maybe drive more aggressively themselves after that, and maybe ruin someone else’s morning. Then they’re just as bad as the original cutter-offer!
The other side of this is that most of the time, that person did not cut you off on purpose. They were reacting to someone on the road in front of them, or they didn’t realize you were as close as you were, or they were distracted because their kid just threw an entire milkshake across the inside of the car. The fact of the matter is it had nothing to do with you.
“Ok, fine,” I hear you saying somewhat skeptically, “but what about my spouse making a rude comment? They know exactly what they’re doing.” And maybe they do. Maybe they are needling you because they’re mad at you about something you’ve done. Do you want to continue that behavior? But what if they lashed out because they’re worried about something at work, and that anxiety slipped through into their personal world? What if they said that because something about the moment reminded them of a moment from their childhood, and they just had a weird emotional flashback that they were not equipped to handle in the moment?
I think about my own partner. I used to feel like he was intentionally trying to ruin the holidays for me. He’d get short, he’d snap at me, he wouldn’t be excited about all the things I was trying to do to make the holidays special. And I took it personally! I let it ruin the holidays for me, which had always been my favorite time of year. It took me several years to realize that it had nothing to do with me. He has his own stress and triggers around the holidays that he was trying to cope with, but that were still slipping through into his daily interactions. Once I realized what was actually going on, I was able to enjoy myself again. And the only thing that changed was what I was thinking about the situation.
The fact is, we can’t know everything that the people around us are thinking or feeling or experiencing. We can’t know if they are acting in a certain way out of spite or out of something that has absolutely nothing to do with us. So, if we only allow ourselves to have a good day if the people around us behave in exactly specific ways that we prescribe, we are never going to have a good day.
The same is true for any of the challenges we face. A flat tire, a power outage, a bad review at work – these are things we will face from time to time. And we get to decide how we react to them. That decision, how we think, how react, is what shapes our day.
Of course, as with all of these things, it’s easier to say this than to do it. If you don’t decide in advance, it’s so easy to get swept up in reacting. Which is why those quiet, early morning moments are so important to me.
This is what I do in that time, to make sure the best version of me is arriving to face the challenges of my day.
Set an intention to guide who you will be that day. Write it in the present tense, like it’s already happening. I am resilient. I am determined. I show up for my commitments. I am supporting my neighbors, my friends, my family. I am getting shit done. I am showing up for myself. I am lighting up the room.
Ask yourself what you need to do, what actions you would need to take, in order for that intention to be true. What does that look like? If I’m showing up for myself, maybe the actions are following through on everything on my calendar. Maybe it’s removing myself from toxic situations. Maybe it’s refusing to be goaded or irritated by someone rude at the grocery store. If I’m being super productive, the actions I need to take might be turning off my phone during focus hours. Maybe it’s blocking social media apps. Maybe it’s taking your work to a different location where you won’t be interrupted.
Decide what you would need to feel in order to take those actions. To follow through on everything on my calendar, maybe I need to feel capable. If I want to not let other people upset me, maybe I need to feel at peace. To decide to leave my phone in the other room, I might need to feel determined.
Write the story that inspires you to feel your desired feeling. What do you need to think, to believe, in order to feel capable or inspired or whatever your ideal emotion is? One of my favorites is “I can do anything I set my mind to.” Another one that has saved me recently is “I am a woman who follows through on her commitments” (that one popped into my head at 5am as I was reaching for the snooze button on my alarm clock). But for you, it might be, “The way other people act has nothing to do with me,” or maybe, “I am in control of my daily life,” or “The things I do make a difference.” There are endless stories we could tell, to inspire us to feel and act and show up as the person we aspire to be.
Having identified all of these things, remind yourself of them throughout the day. Take the time to intentionally feel the feeling you want. Close your eyes and allow yourself to really experience it. What does it feel like in your body? What color is the feeling? Is it fast or slow?
I know. Weird questions to ask about a feeling. But I want you to get familiar with it. To really feel it and experience it, so that if you are faced with challenges, it’s easier to slip back into that feeling because it’s familiar to you.
And when you have slips, remind yourself that it’s ok. Give yourself grace and space, and be curious about what really set you off, and what you might do to react differently in the future.
It’s all trial and error and exploration at this point, and I promise that as you try and learn, your days are going to start to change. You’ll feel happier more often. You’ll feel hopeful more often. You won’t spend as much time feeling overwhelmed or confused or upset. And without changing anything but your perspective, you’ll have better days, better weeks, better months, and better years.
