Day Labeling (by Linda Ellis)
Your alarm clock didn’t ring on the day of an important meeting, you stubbed your toe on the way to the bathroom, and you stumbled downstairs to make coffee and proceeded to spill it all over yourself. You repeated aloud, “THIS is going to be a bad day.” The way some days begin, you feel like adopting the mantra of “Norm” from the show, Cheers: “It’s a dog-eat-dog world and I’m wearing milk-bone underwear.” Maybe that’s partially true—trouble is inevitable. It’s the misery that’s optional.
It doesn’t have to be a bad day. Start it over. I’m not suggesting that you literally start over by going back to bed, resetting the alarm clock and avoiding the bedpost. I’m simply suggesting it is best not to label the day. Continue your day from this point forward, without the label. When you put a label on a day, either in the morning or midway through, you are setting a tone for the day in your mind. By doing so, you are convincing yourself that, because the day started out in a less than desirable way, it will continue to spiral downward. And it will—if you allow it. However, you can turn it around at any time, using your most effective tool: your attitude. The first step is realizing it was your reaction to each situation, not the situation itself, that created the reasons behind your anticipation of a “bad” day.
I’ve often read the quote, “Every day may not be good, but there is good in every day.” Why can’t every day be good? We are the only ones who can make that choice, based on our reactions to negative stimuli. How far into a previously labeled “bad” day do you begin thinking, “I cannot wait until today is over!” You are wishing away perfectly salvageable hours that you might ultimately yearn to have back someday. By mentally affixing a negative label to the day because of one or more unfortunate events, you help to satisfy a self-fulfilling prophecy. If it turns out in the end to have been a “bad” day, it was because you made it that way through you own interpretation of reality.
Is it time for an attitude inspection? It’s easy to convince ourselves that we are going to have a bad day from the onset. The problem with day labeling is that once we accept the conclusion that a day is not worthy of anticipation or enthusiasm, that attitude can—and often will—sabotage and redirect the rest of the day. It’s comparable to a placebo effect, when a percentage of
patients in a study are told that they have been given a pain reducer, though it is nothing more than a sugar pill. Often, they will report feeling a reduced level of pain after taking the medication. They were expecting and anticipating pain relief in their minds from the pill they had swallowed, and in some cases, they received it.
Basically, if you expect bad things to continue to happen, based solely upon the fact that some already have, you are more susceptible to making that scenario a reality. In addition, keeping yourself in that initial mode of negativity may cause you to interpret even the positive as negative, because that is what you’ve decided to expect. Don’t create your own pattern of bad.
The result of one minute does not indicate the outcome of the next.
To be happy is not a decision that’s made,
but rather a choice of joy over sorrow.
Today, you can choose to be happy, not sad
and wake to make the same choice tomorrow.
~Linda Ellis
Excerpt from Live Your Dash by Linda Ellis
www.live-your-dash.com
