Getting Over a Bad Day Becomes Easier if You Take Out the Self-Criticism
Setting off a positive domino effect
Not too long ago, having a day not go my way would be the worst thing that could happen to me. At least that’s how it felt.
I categorized my days as good, bad, and okay, and strived hard for that neutral ground. There was no point in trying to control everything, but if I could just stop the bad, set fewer-attainable goals, and manage my Anxiety, I could be fine. Fingers crossed.
My critical inner voice called it impossible. “That I couldn’t even manage an okay-ish day.” Turns out I could, but it left me feeling empty. It took everything out of me, which led to an ever-growing fear.
If my “everything” only led me to a semi-functional state, then I will never be able to do more, someday — in the future. Never, ever.
What if I plan to write a book next year?
Or try to cook three healthy meals a day?
Could I find some time for exercise? Hobbies?
How will I manage all of them or even some of them?
These neutral days made me feel sad and inadequate often leaving me questioning the purpose of trying. I wanted to lie in bed, stop my mind from running and not get up, try and fail again.
I felt like everyone was better than me and constantly cursed my mind for its inability to handle the simplest of tasks. I simultaneously imagined a perfect future and felt exhausted from waking up. I was stuck.
When you try a number of things, one of them works out on rare occasions. Life has a mysterious way of pulling me back, even after I think I’ve given up. I feel hope amidst the cynicism. It doesn’t draw me out of the dark instantly but coaxes me to try again, to start it up, one step at a time.
In my pursuit of making life easier to survive, I’ve recently taken a few pages from the school absurdism and begun to accept that there is no one right way to do things. There is no right way of doing things, period.
Every plan has its pros and cons, which I will have to face.
Sometimes I will learn before, during the planning stage, and for others, it might take me a few tries to realize something. They’re both okay. And as long as I am learning from them, nothing else needs to be obsessed over.
If I have to ride out the vicious, uncontrollable, painful situations anyway, could I possibly try to make the experience better for myself?
I call the bad days “chaotic” now. These are days when things don’t go according to plan. Every activity presents a previously unforeseen challenge, and a few consecutive battles leave me exhausted and frazzled.
I can’t do anything to protect myself from this predicament or optimize my way out. There’s a strange sense of peace in accepting this.
The secret ingredient to a day that doesn’t completely throw me off is shoving away self-criticism. I always knew that I was making myself feel bad but didn’t know exactly how much. I was surprised.
My inner critic amplified things, chipped away at my mind’s capacity, and made everything done until then seem like a waste. Every day I was working towards an elusive goal, where even if I completed everything that I set out, the voice would go, “Are you sure you can repeat this?”
Wins were flukes, and losses were always and solely my fault. If a situation didn’t go my way, I must have missed something and I should have thought of all the potential issues and respective solutions before.
The amount of time and energy I spent dealing with self-criticism was a significant drain. Even when I talked myself out of it, the words remained etched in my mind. It let it become too powerful.
It was almost infectious in nature. It could distort reality.
I started off by fighting it but soon realized that an armory of strategies would do me good. I needed to strike a fair balance between different parts of me and not just let the critical part shine.
I converse with it, negotiate, argue away its claims, and at times imagine pulling the trigger. I don’t feel the need to categorize my days.
Hopefully, soon, I will be able to offset a chaotic day by doing something nice for myself, like watching a good movie. I’ll treat myself with kindness and not ridicule. And, living with my critical inner voice will be easier.
Today, I will focus on reducing it. It’s a great mood uplifter.
The uniqueness and dynamic nature of a person (and life itself) make for a very interesting combination in the sense that a 'way' is often never linear.. One could read a phrase for example, encounter something and come back again to read that same phrase and learn something new all of a sudden why? Well, we're constantly shape-shifting, parts of ourselves swapping in and out, arguing like traffic noises within us, needing to be addressed and then you find out that what was the 'right way' yesterday simply flops the next day.. Sometimes one must take it as it comes, after all we can be quite adaptable as human beings.. it always helps to be patient too with one's self, to not forget that you're a breathing thing and quite the miracle. Take your time with it Debdutta :)
Thanks for sharing.