Boy, have I had one of those days! As I was driving home from work I was writing this blog in my head, reviewing the things I did and didn’t do that resulted in the hungry, crabby, jittery, and generally annoyed (and likely annoying) mass of mess my family would greet as I walked in the door.

There can be all sorts of difficult days. We all have days when the completely unexpected comes at us like a gale force wind and everything else must be dropped. Then there are the days we must plow through despite personal concerns and distractions that pull our hearts elsewhere. There are also days when I feel like I must have a bulls eye on my chest that says, “Please, take your anger out here…”

I’m not talking about those days, which are largely out of our control. Nope, today was completely within my control and I have to say I did it to myself. It’s easy to see how it happened, at least in retrospect. So I’m making some notes to myself to try to avoid this in the future!

Here are five suggestions for avoiding “One of Those Days:”

  1. Get a good night’s sleep. Yesterday we “sprung forward” and my body was still “falling back” on standard time when the alarm went off this morning.
  2. Follow your routine. That struggle to get out of bed messed with my morning routine, so I rushed out of the house hastily throwing some food in a bag so I could make it to my morning abs class on time (exercise – something I did right!)
  3. Eat well. That hastily packed lunch wasn’t nearly enough food to get me through my busy day, leading me to temptations that were a bad idea and left me to slog through the afternoon on empty.
  4. Vary your activities. I made the mistake of scheduling three back to back phone calls of an hour each. It’s difficult to keep up the energy and attention required for one intense subject, never mind three!
  5. Give yourself a break. My planning failure led to my general announcement to the office that I had “exactly 10 minutes to pee and eat!” Lest any foolhardy individual attempt to get my precious attention…What was I thinking when I booked that schedule for today? Even the most productive, energetic people can benefit from a break or two in a busy day.

There you have it, folks, my new strategy for avoiding “those” days. And the last thing I did? I looked ahead to tomorrow, realized I was swamped and cancelled that outside meeting. Fresh start!

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