The Good Day/Bad Day Teeter-Totter

I’ve been kicking around this idea for some time- the way we react to one event tends to set the course for how we’ll color events that happen the rest of the day. Once we get going in a certain direction, it becomes harder to switch course and easier to keep going down our same path. I call it the Good day/bad day teeter-totter. For example: I’m currently experiencing a very pleasant Sunday morning with my wife and daughter.  We’re having coffee, reading internet things, and practicing screeching. Fun times for all. I’m in a good mood.

The screeching, however, is getting louder and louder. She doesn’t need anything, she’s just practicing her vocal range. When the screeching reached a fever pitch I attempted to snap her out of her spiral of screeches by saying, “Hey.” but, what actually came out was “HEY!!” What was meant to only break up her screeches came across as frustration. I was surprised how my ‘hey’ actually sounded out loud, as was my wife.

It DID have the intended effect as my daughter just stared up at me, too surprised to continue her screeching. Still, I felt awful for the way my ‘hey’ came out. Suddenly it was not fun times for all and I’m in a weird mood.

I’m not in a bad mood, just a weird mood. I feel a mixture of guilt and shame even though on the inside I didn’t lose my temper nearly as much as it seemed like I did from the outside. It was a non-issue that morphed into kind of an issue.

So now there’s this cloud of weird/potentially bad mood hovering around our blue sky Sunday morning apartment. My wife is slightly on edge because she thinks I’m probably on edge. Really, I’m not on edge I’m just sad/sorry/ashamed that my ‘hey’ came out louder and more aggressive than I meant it. It feels weird to bounce right back into happy-go-lucky mood after my ‘Hey!!’ turned out to be an overreaction.

This is just an example of how the way we react to something can drastically alter our mood. Had I done nothing, or not said my ‘hey’ quite so forcefully, the moment would have passed and we’d all be having a great day.

Normally we think “I’m in a weird mood because…the baby was screeching and even though she’s super cute, it was a tad on the ear-piercing side of things.” But what really puts us in a weird mood is the way we react. I’m not in a weird mood because the baby was screeching, I’m in a weird mood because I said ‘hey’ too loud and feel bad that I might have scared my wife and daughter.

Now that we got that example out of the way, onto the teeter totter. 

Having a good day or a bad day is a lot like being on a teeter-totter. Each day we start out more or less in the middle, but we quickly build momentum one way or the other.

Here you are. Good morning.

 

Then, you say “Hey!” too loud to your daughter and you feel weird about it.

You take two steps towards the ‘bad day’ end of the teeter-totter. Once you get going towards the ‘bad day’ end of things, it becomes easier to slide further that way and harder to walk up the teeter-totter towards the ‘good day’ side.

If we’re not careful, some minor negative moment can end up having a lasting impact that colors the rest of the day.  We build momentum in the wrong direction until things that normally aren’t a big deal push us further into our mood. “I’m in a weird mood, and I have to get gas. What a bad day.”

This picture really illustrates the edge of my artistic abilities. Here, let me label what’s happening.

That’s better.

Back to the teeter-totter since that’s easier to draw.

 

Before long, we’re so far down the path of convincing ourselves we’re having a bad day that it’s nearly impossible to stay in the game. We look up and we’re not even on the teeter-totter anymore. We’ve given up. Our teeter-totter defies physics and sticks almost straight up in the air, even though that wouldn’t work in real life. We’re just having that bad of a day.

So, we know we’re having a bad day. Great. Now what? In order to actually fix our bad day we need to do a couple things. First, we need to climb back on the teeter-totter. Second, we need to understand there are no bad days, only bad moments. More on that in a second.

 

Climbing back on the teeter-totter: It’s going to be difficult, but momentum works both ways. Once we get on the teeter-totter and start thinking positive thoughts and doing positive things, we’ll notice the teeter totter starting to balance out a little. Yes, I spilled coffee on my shirt, but I called my grandma, and that made me feel good.

By stopping our negative thoughts and focusing on the positive we start evening out the teeter-totter, and the climbing becomes a little bit easier.

When we focus on enough positive things the day suddenly isn’t so bad. There’s some good and some bad. We’re kind of back to square one.

Just because you’re off the teeter-totter doesn’t mean you can’t get back on. Once you get back on you can start building momentum towards the positive.

As the momentum keeps building it becomes easier to look up and decide you’re having a good day, instead of a bad day.

Before long the positives outweigh the negatives to the point that you can walk off the teeter-totter completely, this time on the positive side where it will once again defy physics. Look, I’m not a professional artist.

 

No bad days, only bad moments: The second part is more mental. There really is no such thing as a bad day. Bad moments become bad days because people give up and say stuff like, “I’m just having a bad day.” When we say stuff like that we’re opening the door to as much negativity as wants to enter. Things that normally wouldn’t be a big deal suddenly become huge because we’ve decided we’re having a bad day.

We can stop that line of thinking in its tracks. Take each moment as it comes. When you’re having a bad moment, understand it’s only a moment, unless you let it be more.

Because this is just a mental trick, it doesn’t have to work both ways. When we’re having a good day we can allow that momentum to build. There’s no rule that says you have to consider good moments as just moments. You can consider bad moments as individual moments but allow good moments to add up to an overall good day.

In sports they say it’s best to have a short memory when things are going wrong. If you’ve missed the last six shots you’ve attempted, you don’t want to dwell on those six misses. Each new shot is a new chance. Once you make one you want to mentally think, “Alright, that’s one in a row” instead of, “Well, I’m one for seven and that’s not very good, either.”

Using this approach helps keep momentum in our favor. Let the bad moments go and hold onto the good moments.

A key to having more ‘good day’ moments is to spend some time noticing when good things happen.

I said “Hey!” to my daughter too loudly and I’m in a weird mood, BUT It’s Sunday so neither of us are working and it’s sunny out. We can go for a walk, hang out as a family, and maybe go to the park. There’s lots of good day type activities we can do since we’re both off work and it’s a nice day.

Any day you’re still alive is a good day. It’s not a 50-50 game. We should be able to have almost exclusively good days if we frame it in our minds the right way.

If you enjoyed this article please share it or comment or do something that let’s me know I’m not talking into the void

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