There would be no dull, if there was no bright, there would be no wrong if there was no right. There would be no happy if there was no sad, and how can you expect good if there is no bad. The principles governing our cosmos make it impossible for us to avoid the dull, wrong, sad and bad part of it. As much as you might try to avoid these, they somehow creep into your lives, and when they do, you don’t know how to handle them.

No matter how strong you build your walls, nature has its ways of getting through. We cant avoid it, can only adapt.

You are so busy trying to avoid discomforts that you forget that you can actually learn how to live with them. So when you think you are completely secure, the perfect storm awaits to get you out of your comforts.Discomforts are unavoidable(they will find a way into your well guarded lives), rather than planning on how to avoid them, you are better off learning how to live through them with minimal damage.

All you have to do is to keep your head above the water

It is impossible to live a life without a single bad day. If you don’t know how to swim you will fall into the water one day or the other. I know you all strive for that perfect problemless life, but you should be well aware now that perfection is beyond the realms of possibility. You can have a period of magical days, weeks, months, but then creeps in that one dark day. The day that you so wish to avoid. The day which not only spoils the present but is also capable of denting the future. Although you might feel bullet proof, but when misery hits you, it would be more like a bombardment than a bullet.

Here are a few ways which might help you keep your head above the water and come unscathed from this type of a day:

1. Don’t run for the Woods, be a Tiger– When calamity strikes, the easiest option is to run. But no matter how fast and furious you are at running, calamity will overtake you soon. Its effect will be magnified because of the time you wasted running. Don’t try to ignore the bad day, accept it and face the pain the same way you enjoy the pleasures.

2. Curb the emotional splurge urge– Venting out your emotions not only adds to your miseries but conducts the negativity to others. This adds to the overall gloom. Try not to sensationalize your misery, it will only get you sympathy and an excuse to stay miserable.

3. The magic of altering your perspective- Stuck in a single plain of thought prevents your from seeing through the temporary obstacle in front of you. If you are willing to be a little flexible, you will be able to realign your perspective, and the problem would no longer remain the problem. We see bad because we prevent ourselves, even temporarily, from seeing the good. On a bad day, this gains special importance. When the cosmos seems to conspire against you, it is magical to see the world without keeping yourself at the center of it.

4. Ice bucket challenge– When you seem to be having a bad day, a sudden shock becomes the need of the hour. This will both divert attention from your issues and lead you to see the world in a better way. Sudden shocks include consciously doing anything outside your comfort zone, these can range from an ice bucket challenge to anything adventurous.

5. If you surround yourself with pokeyoupines, you will be poked sooner than later– You have to chose who you share your circle of influence with. These people are the ones who are the first to know about your day, without you telling. Their response to your situation adds to your misery or clears it altogether. We are better off surrounding ourselves with a few clowns who turn your frowns upside down than many friends who just notice and at max empathize.

6. It may be possible to beat down the body, but its impossible to beat down a free spirit– Yes we all have bad days, but how we respond to these define our lives. Its not worth surrendering years of hard work to one bad day.We can either choose to succumb to the worldly randomness working against us, or we can take our blows gracefully and wait for a better day. If you are ready to wait for your turn, it is a fact that good days outnumber the bad ones heavily. It is for you to decide if you want to let go of all the good days just because of that one bad one.

Sometimes all you need to do is cling on

Don’t bash yourself too much over the sudden turn of fate, just clinging on till the storm ends.

Even superman has days when his suit doesn’t come out from laundry. He doesn’t wait for it to dry, he improvises. Rather than losing yourself to the negativity of a bad day, you can improvise.  Fooling your own mind to look beyond the obvious problems.

It is inevitable to avoid bad days. I found that out when months of hard work at the gym was flushed out due to one bad Ayurvedic supplement. My folly was that I wanted to replace the chemical with the natural. Not everything goes according to plan, but we either waste time whining or survive to fight another day. I hope you choose the latter because I did. Hope you have a good day, and even if you aren’t, its ok, adapt to the bad one.