We often have one of those days where nothing really goes your way.
Your routine is interrupted, your plans are all squashed, you may have to go through emotional or financial distress, you might have to deal with a health issue or have to take care of a family member, you might have a personal setback — a job loss, a breakup, a fight with a friend or loved one, even loss of property or injury due to an act of god or an act of malice. And of course you never saw it coming.
In the moment, either you act — you do what needs to be done to resolve the bad situation, or you ask for help from someone else, if there is someone to ask.
But after the day has passed, you might end up feeling dejected or frustrated about why it happened to you, why you are unlucky, why God is against you, why you’re having such a bad freaking day.
Some of us have to go through a series of these bad days, or months, or years. And when these “bad” days keep piling up over time, you probably start losing hope, start losing the spark of curiosity or fantasy that you used to have, and become bitter and jaded from all the hits you’ve been taking.
The vicious cycle
I know how this feels since I am going through the same thing in my current phase of life. It’s hard. It’s paralyzing and it creates a vicious cycle: since things aren’t going your way, you feel down and dejected, and since you feel down and dejected, you’re unable to do what needs to be done to make things go your way.
Some things are in your control, and some are not
Now this is where we need to be careful because we enter the territory of the dichotomy of control, as the Stoics put it — that some things in life are in our control and some things are not. Captain obvious here, but I’m not sure we’re as good as we think at telling which situation is which. I guess that is the primary task of life, better put in words by Epictetus:
*The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own.
Epictetus, Discourses 2.5.4–5
The point of this essay is to put these “bad days” or “bad situation” in perspective along three dimensions — 1) the dichotomy of control — or what part of the bad situation we can truly impact, 2) perspective — is it truly as bad as you think relative to what other people are going through, and 3) luck / chance / providence — can it be worse? You bet it can be.
Is it truly as bad as you think?
This second part — perspective — is a frame of reference to help us calibrate whether a situation is really as bad as it feels, or whether our minds are making it worse than it actually is. Often, the folks who are stuck in this rut — I assume — are most likely to be either introverted, or to have gone through enough trauma to have turned them more inward-looking than outward-looking. We think we’re the center of the universe, and rightly so — we are the ones experiencing it in the first person, and all of this is happening to us in real-time, all the reality and all the thoughts and emotions — the human experience.
But we often forget, especially during such times of distress, that we live in a world with 8 billion other humans, and infinite species of plants, animals and other life. We’re not alone. Of course, I’m not asking you to compare your life to that of your pet (because you will get depressed fast) or to that of a tree, but we should sometimes think about everyone who is far far far more unlucky than we are.
To begin with, just the fact that you are able to read my blog probably puts you above half the population in the world — people who live in abject poverty, lack internet access, cannot read, or are surviving war, famine, and natural disasters. And then, if you happen to be someone like me living in a city like Seattle, earning decent money, having a comfortable apartment and a car, and having at least a small circle of friends, then you’re easily in the top 1% of the entire planet. I can keep slicing these segments finer and finer, but I think you get the point. Thanks to social media’s ascent in the mid-2010s, as a society we’re now in the habit of constant comparison — and only against those who appear better off or happier than we are. It’s all fake, folks.
Could it be worse? Yes
And finally, the third dimension: the nature of the universe, and the governing laws of what makes everything tick — randomness, chance, luck, providence — whatever you want to call it. We can never see the whole picture, even in hindsight. There are too many angles, too many effects on our lives from unforeseen and indirect sources — the degree of randomness that determines the course of our lives, especially the most significant events, is extremely high. Ultimately, this boils down to asking yourself a single question every time you feel down in the dumps:
Could it be worse? — Yes. You bet. It can be infinitely worse. Every single time, and in every single situation.
Happened to me recently. All my personal plans got disrupted — I had to do international travel to help a family member in need of medical attention. During travel, I got stranded at an airport because the country’s ATC went down. After reaching the destination, another family member fell critically ill and needed intensive care. Two days later, I came down with a fever and congestion — but I still had to assist my parent with those hospital visits, twice a day, come back home, and work at night. And I had to pick up driving again in a place I hadn’t driven in 12 years, with no other option. To some, this may be nothing, and I commend you for being that way. For me, it was a lot and I was mopey and dejected, projecting all this onto the future, impacting my present. But again, if I ask myself, could it have been worse? Hell, freaking YES. At every single point, all of this could have been a million times worse, and just the fact that I’m able to write about all this in peace right now at my place, sitting in my bed, and publishing on a blog, means that all of this was nothing compared to what could have been.
This is where expectation vs. reality comes in: how bad we think our experiences are versus what they objectively are.
To summarize: the goal, especially mine, is to build the mental faculties to stay poised enough to hold these three things in mind when our peace gets disrupted — to put things in the right perspective.
- What is in your control vs not? — Act on what you can control
- Is it truly as bad as you think? — Don’t compare to those above you; there are a lot of people who’d kill to be in your situation
- Could it be worse? — Yes. Every single time. And be grateful that it wasn’t.
So what actually works?
How can you do this? I won’t recommend any self-help books. I’ve read all of them, watched all the videos, and listened to all the podcasts. Two simple practices are all you need: 1) mindfulness — cut away distractions as much as possible, slow down, breathe, and focus on whatever you need to do, and 2) action — keep working, keep moving, keep doing whatever you need to do, not as a nervous wreck, but lightly, sincerely and with low expectations.
Hope you found this useful. I’d love to hear stories if any of this resonated with you. Thanks for stopping by my old-school blog.