Everyone has had one of “those days.” You know the kind they mean: It started when you forgot to place your coffee cup in the Keurig machine, and your morning coffee ended up on the counter and eventually on the kitchen floor. This caused you to be late for the bus, train, or carpool ride, which in turn made you miss the first half hour of the presentation that your boss stressed was of “High Importance” in an email yesterday.

And guess what? It went downhill from there!

There are lots of terms to describe these days, but it’s best if we keep it family-friendly by merely calling it a bad day. One thing to keep in mind about these days is that they are an aberration and happen only occasionally. Still, they can wreak havoc on your nerves and cause you to believe that your entire life has been in the pits when, in fact, it’s only been this one solitary day.

Next time one of these black days comes out of nowhere, sit down at the end of it and do some serious reflecting on it. It will help you move on and maybe even keep you from having another one.

Did this one crummy day send you back to the stone-age?

Of course not! It probably didn’t destroy your career, mess up your short- and long-term goals, or ruin your reputation, either. Don’t turn it into something it doesn’t deserve to be. This has just been one rough day and does not reflect your entire life.

Ask yourself what impact this day had. Most of the time, the answer will be “very little.” You’ll get up tomorrow (remembering to use the coffee cup this time), and things will be back to normal. And in a few days, everything that you magnified will have become a faded memory.

How would you handle things differently?

If you’re like many people, you take on the blame for that one rotten day. But you need to remember that sometimes a set of circumstances, over which you had no control, collide and cause your world to crumble temporarily. It’s okay for you to take responsibility but there are times when things happen that you could not have prevented. You might not want to call yourself a “victim,” but you can give yourself some slack and stop absorbing all of the blame. The important thing is to learn from any mistakes you made, and then put them behind you.

What went right?

So you think you had a day that could have been made into a Stephen King horror novel. But not everything could have gone wrong. There must have been a few patches of sunshine and blue skies.

Instead of spending the entire evening replaying all the things that went wrong, try to recall some positives. If you think hard enough, you can come up with a few to balance off the bad stuff and help your mood for tomorrow.

If these days are frequently happening, maybe it’s time to move on?

Let us help you find a better situation. Get in touch with HCR Personnel Solutions, a leading manufacturing recruitment agency in Canada that recruits top professionals for exceptional career opportunities.