Plan for bad days on your good days
This sounds obvious, and it is, but it's also a surprisingly powerful exercise
Everyone has bad days. Days where a mental or physical condition is flaring up, days when you’re ill or run down. Days where things go wrong and your day details entirely. If you’re a caregiver ther ewill be days where that takes more time or energy than normal. There are plenty of reasons days will turn into shit ones. Sometimes you get multiple reasons in one day.
So, how do you manage a bad day?
It’s a lot easier to plan for a bad day when you’re in a good place, or a not-bad place. You have a clearer mind, you’re less likely to hate or berate yourself, and you have more energy to put things in place.
What can you do in advance on a regular basis? What can you automate? Can you delegate things? Can you designate a second in command who can step in if you need to take some time?
How about making leftovers? Always having some soup in the freezer for a quick meal?
Maybe you need to build a kit for times when you’re struggling to get out of bed or care for yourself. I don’t have a specific box of things but here’s what’s in my ‘in case of emergency’ kit:
There’s always painkillers and antacids on my bedside table.
There’s always books around
I always have a headache hat in the freezer
I try to have leftovers available, or easy snacks around as often as possible
I keep these things topped up because I never know when I’m going to need these, but when I do, I don’t have energy to make these happen. Can you build a kit like this?
Additionally:
I try to schedule a few social media posts in advance so I’m not completely off the grid if I’m unable to post.
I’m always at least two weeks ahead on this newsletter
I have a to do/done list so I can remember what I was doing and what I need to do
These are all things I do because I have regular migraines. I sometimes get some warning, and I sometimes don’t. Sometimes I catch them in time for the meds to work and sometimes I don’t. Either way, having these in place means I can focus on recovering. When my mental health is bad, having these things in easy reach remind me to look after myself even when I don’t want to, or feel like I’ve not earned it.
Giving myself some days space in terms of posting content means I can focus my energy on the minimum I have to do to keep myself afloat without having to worry too much about being creative or staring at a screen too much.
Any one of these is immensely helpful, but altogether this is a powerful set of tools that allow me to really look after myself when I need to, without the panic of how much work I’ll go back to when I’m back to 100%.
Now, there is some privilege here:
I am self employed (though I had a lot of this stuff in place when I was employed).
I work from home, and I’ve always worked in jobs that allow me to be flexible
My chronic illnesses tend to have peaks and troughs that allow me to manage them like this
Not everyone has these privileges. But there may still be things you can do to make your life easier when you need it.
Even if you don’t have a chronic illness, considering what you can do to set yourself up to make a bad day go smoother is an interesting exercise.
It requires a number of things:
Really engaging with what bad days look like for you, and how they affect your life
Being kind to yourself. The whole point of this is to figure out how to make things easier on your bad day and implement them before you need them
Accepting you have some limits and working with them, not pushing through them
I’ve found overall my productivity, happiness, and overall wellbeing is much better since taking this kind and nurturing approach to my bad days.
It’s another strand of knowing my own bullshit and working with it.
I also think you can make this a fun crafting exercise! Grab a cardboard box or tote bin, gather things to fill it (grab some moodlifters as well - I sell some encouragment cards here #ShamelessPlug), and then decorate the outside with stickers, or collages.
Just make the box really aethestically pleasing and make sure it’s in a place that makes sense for you (you may need multiple in different places).
Then it becomes a reminder that you deserve to spend time and energy on yourself, looking after yourself when you need it. A message from past you to care of yourself. Take note, and allow yourself to be served by past you’s efforts.
Do you have an emergency kit? What would be in yours?