“I’m going through a tough time,” a friend told me after I asked about her new business. I was shocked. She was young, ambitious, intelligent, and articulate––an obvious winner. “I’m in a funk,” she continued, “and some days I get nothing done. And the truth be told, behind my happy facade I’m struggling and not feeling too good about myself.”
As she spoke, I contemplated how we alienate others when we pretend our lives are perfect. I had spent decades with a smile on my face and an upbeat veneer while I was battling my own demons. What’s wrong with me? I didn’t know that bad days are just normal.
“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not, and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad,” wrote Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Everybody is struggling with something. And if we envy someone’s perfect life, we just don’t know them too well.
There will be days when we wake up feeling worse than the day before. A mysterious wind sweeps through the night and casts a spell on us. It happens. And in the morning, we wake up to a bad day. We experience a poor attitude. Nothing goes right, and life is a struggle.
Brett Favre explained, “Every day is not perfect. You have your bad days and good days just like anyone else. You do not want to talk to people sometimes. It is normal.” “Some days are for living,” suggested Malcolm S Forbes. “Others are for getting through.”
It helps to look at every week like a baseball player who aims for a good batting average. Sometimes, four to five good days is a great week. And it’s enough to succeed in life. We won’t like our bad days, but life gets better when we know that bad days just happen.
“Some days are just bad days, that’s all,” wrote Dita Von Tesse. “You have to experience sadness to know happiness, and I remind myself that not every day is going to be a good day, that’s just the way it is.” The best thing about a bad day is that it’s over at bedtime.
I told my young friend that bad days happen during successful weeks. “The goal for me is to avoid two bad days in a row,” I admitted. “I aim for a good batting average every week, with more good days than bad, and that tends to be a wonderful week for me.”
Just because you’re having a bad day doesn’t mean you’re having a bad life.
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