Learning to Trust the Bad Days

I used to fight bad days as if they were a personal failure. If I woke up foggy, I would push harder. If focus was trash, I would sit my ass at the desk just a bit longer. If my body said stop, I would tell it to shut the fuck up and try to keep going.

That approach did not work, at least for me it didn't. I never ever did. All the while I never wanted to admit it either.

The problem with fighting a bad day is two fold. You actually lose twice. THe first loss is when you don't get the output you wanted. Then again because you burned what reserves you had left trying to force it to happen. THen your tomorrow begins in deficit.

If you have been folowing the last few posts made, then you know I've written before about only operating at my best version around 30% of the time. This means 70% of my days are some version of "not great" or "shit town" as I like to call lit sometimes. If I treat every one of those days as a battle to win, I'm at war with my own life most of the time. That's exhausting. And exhausting doesn't move the needle.

I used to do that. Treat those days, or the 70%, as battles to win. Just another challenge to be overcome. Like I said, I tried doing this until I finally realized I was actually just spinning my wheels and lieing to myself.

So I've been experimenting with something different. Trusting the bad days instead of fighting them.

So wht the hell does that mean? Here's what that looks like in practice. When the signals are obvious, I stop pretending I can push through. I handle the autopilot stuff. Email and other small tasks like responding to social media comments and such. Things that don't require me to be sharp. I rest when I need to rest. And I don't punish myself for it afterward.

The weird part? It actually works, or at least it does for me. When I give myself permission to have a bad day, the recovery comes faster. I'm not dragging yesterday's exhaustion and trash into tomorrow. The next good window shows up sooner because I didn't drain the tank trying to squeeze water from a rock.

There's a mental shift too. When I stop treating bad days as failures, they lose some of their weight. They're just part of the battle rhythm. Not every day is a 30% day. But that is okay, its not a flaw in the system. That is the system.

The hard part is trusting it in the moment. When I'm in the middle of a foggy day, the voice in my head says you're being a fucking slug. It says you're wasting time. It says real progress means grinding on. That voice is wrong, but it's loud as hell.

I'm still learning to ignore it. Some days I succeed. Some days I don't. But the days I trust the process and let myself rest? Those are the days that set up the good ones.

What about you? Do you fight the bad days or have you learned to work with them?

Thanks for reading,
Joe

_{Notes:
-All content is mine unless otherwise annotated.
-Images are my own unless otherwise noted.
-Photos edited using MS Paint and/or iPhone SE.
-Page Dividers from The Terminal Discord.}