The Handbook for Bad Days Page 4

  4. They stay positive; they never complain.

  Great! How nice to proclaim, I’m happy and that’s that. This is my decision, and you’ll just have to deal with it. But then life… what a buzzkill, eh? I’ve tried to do it: biking through the pouring rain with a stubborn smile, nodding along politely upon hearing bad news, and laughing as I barely make deadlines—but it started to hurt my cheeks.

  No one is happy all the time. No one can spend their life never complaining, and everyone ends up wasting energy on things we don’t have any control over. That’s pretty much just what life is! At best, you can have control for a time, or the illusion of control, until life presents you with the facts once again. Complaining (see p. 95 to discover the art of Advanced Complaining) is not a sign of weakness. It serves a purpose: Complaining can relax us, and it helps to contextualize and clarify situations. It demonstrates what’s getting at you. It’s wonderful! Complaining allows us to articulate better and more honestly what’s going on in our lives than all our socially acceptable words combined.

  5. They are friendly, honest, and unafraid to speak up. They are not out to please others.

  If I could put together my ideal personality from a list of characteristics, “friendly, honest, and unafraid to speak up” would certainly be on my short list. It’s the second part of the description that I find difficult: that mentally strong people don’t concern themselves with pleasing other people. It’s absolutely true that you are not required to bear the expectations and needs of others while you’re walking the tightrope of your own life, but another option is balancing out the needs of others with your own. I myself cannot picture a spiritual journey on which others are by definition excluded from the considerations we make.

  Lak’ech ala k’in is an ancient Mayan proverb: I am you, and you are me. It’s an expression of an awareness that we are part of something bigger and that we are all one. All our actions influence everything around us. Being aware of how you can please others while still making choices for your own benefit is, placed in a bigger context, a powerful and compassionate way of life rather than a weakness. The trick is to distinguish between pleasing that can help you grow and pleasing that diminishes you, to understand when you are balanced and when you might lose your balance.

  6. They weigh the risks and advantages before they act.

  I can honestly say I have made some of the best decisions in my life without risk assessment and carefully weighed benefit analyses. Those decisions came from a profound understanding and a courage that cannot be explained in words. I’m not saying weighing risks is a bad idea. On the contrary, it’s an excellent method for survival. The thing is that analyzing, rationalizing, assessing… these are all based in the mind, and we have more tools for life in our toolbox, including our body and our intuition. Making lists of pros and cons doesn’t necessarily lead to the best decisions. For example, would you want to buy a house that seems like a great investment on paper but doesn’t feel like home? Would you want to marry someone dull just because it’s safe?

  I owe my job at Happinez to a woman who cared about more than the numbers alone. Had it been up to the first few publishers the idea was pitched to, the magazine never would’ve existed, but as Inez wrote in her book Als jouw leven een cirkel is, waar sta je dan? (roughly translated, If Your Life Is a Circle, Where Do You Stand?): “Why should I have given myself over to doubt while my entire being was telling me I had to [act]?! This idea came to me straight from the center of the circle, from my heart and soul, possibly even from heaven and earth.”

  Intuition is what gives you the courage to persevere. Include your whole self in what you do and choose. Adjust to what you know as well as what you feel, but don’t let yourself become stuck; keep moving. Sometimes you just have to do something first, and then find out whether it was a good choice as the process unfolds. No hopes, no fears, a monk whispered to me in a Thai monastery once.

  7. They celebrate the success of others and aren’t jealous.

  Have you ever seen someone shine, wished it was you, and then felt a bit uncomfortable about it afterward? Jealousy isn’t generally an attractive emotion, especially when it’s tainted by anger and resentment. Still, jealousy can be a pretty accurate indication of where you are in life and where you want to go. It helps you to get a clearer sense of your goals. On the path from feeling jealous to celebrating someone else’s success, there are precious few stepping-stones. Knowing what desirable behavior is and observing what is happening instead can be painful. But maybe you’ll find a moment to voice your ambivalence: I’m happy for you, and at the same time, I feel that what you have achieved is what I want as well. You’ll be vulnerable, but sincerely so.

  Lastly, jealousy can prod you to ask an equally important question: Are you paying enough attention to your own achievements? Do you celebrate how far you yourself have come? The more you manage to be unabashedly proud of yourself from time to time, the more you’ll be genuinely happy about other people’s windfalls and successes. Celebrate your own achievements regularly!

  // Manage the Mulling

   There’s no sense in ruminating all day

  “Don’t worry!” A classic example of an elephant-in-the-room situation. The moment you tell yourself not to think about the elephant, you can’t stop doing so. It’s the same with worrying: It’s there, and it’s not going away until you give it attention. In a sense, worrying is like crying or getting angry: If you suppress it, you know that it will find a way out eventually, often in less charming forms and at unexpected moments.

  Although I hate worrying, I do it regularly. It has a sneaky way of sapping energy. You can have the exact same thought ten thousand times, in a loop. Even as you’re doing other stuff, your worries remain constantly in the background, like hold music that sets your teeth on edge. On bad days, this constant noise can exhaust you before you realize it. If you don’t address your worries, they won’t go anywhere, as this endless loop rarely leads to a solution. Most worries aren’t that interesting, because they aren’t realistic, aren’t important, or concern things you can’t control.

  The best thing you can do for yourself is give your worries your full attention. Just as you would kneel down to console a crying toddler, lend your worries a kind, warm ear. You might not always have time for this in the moment, but whenever you find yourself continually mulling over things, or if there’s constant noise in your head, set aside some time for worrying. Carve out space in your schedule, and make an appointment with yourself. It sounds childish, but it’s exceptionally effective.

  This appointment doesn’t necessarily mean assuming the lotus position on a yoga mat. Worry time needn’t be a solemn ritual. Just sitting on a bench, doing the dishes, or taking a minute during a boring car ride will do just fine, as long as you let your mind wander undisturbed and uninterrupted. Fifteen minutes, half an hour, maybe longer. Set a timer, then make some tea, put your feet up on the coffee table, invite your thoughts and worries, and speak your mind. Perhaps you don’t even know anymore what you want to fret about. If all else fails? Start ranting. Your only job until that timer goes off is to focus on your worries. As in a good brainstorming session, there are no rules: You don’t have to select your thoughts; there are no “yes, buts,” judgments, or practical objections. Just worry away!

  Let your thoughts run wild like a mob of feral horses, sweating and untamed. Revel in your own misery like never before. Perhaps you’ll have a revelation. Perhaps you’ll have an epiphany or a glimpse of a solution. Or maybe not. When the timer goes off, stop. If necessary, schedule a new time to vent, but hold yourself to that time limit.

  You’ll discover at least two things. First, that worries lose their intensity when you dedicate your full time and attention to them. This is how you deflate them. At some point, you’ll be done. Worrying gets boring. If you listen carefully, you’ll find you keep thinking the same thing over and over. If you ignore your worries, they’ll keep demanding attention, b
ut if you do listen to them, sooner or later you’ll realize: Well, now I know. Boring!

  Second, scheduling your rumination will save you energy. It’s unnecessary to freak out about a difficult conversation while you’re dancing at a music festival. You’d rather not be worrying if the person is angry at you while looking for your bike keys. Can you do anything to change things right this second? No? Then save your worrying for a better time.

  Your brain is a work in progress. You can lay down new thought paths and neglect others. The more you work to circumvent your usual worry triggers, the more chance you have of curing your anxiousness. Everyday triggers can be things like social media, reading through text conversations with your ex, seeing those slacks that no longer fit or the inbox that you’ll never be able to clear. Save yourself from all that.

  Ask Yourself the Question

  Whenever I find myself in a worry mode while I really am, or would like to be, busy with something else, such as when I’m waiting in line at a cash register or watching a movie, I ask myself the Question: “What can I do about it now?” If the answer is “not a lot, really,” then I hit the brakes. At most, I might write a quick note on my phone: E-mail this person, do this or that this week, try to find out more tomorrow, etc. I often feel relieved after asking myself the Question. It’s as if you have a helicopter view of the layout of your own thoughts and can tackle the gridlock in one go. You possess this power.

  // The Flowers of Tomorrow Are in the Seeds of Today

   Be mindful of your habits and patterns

  Rest, cleanliness, routine. Dutch parents swear by these rules of thumb, and for good reason: That classic trio is a balm for bad days and a foundation for better ones. Routine gives rhythm to your days and stops you from wasting time by weighing the same decisions day in and day out. Everyday life is full of recurring patterns and habits, and fortunately so: It would be exhausting not to have them. Did you know that there’s a limited amount of decision making and a finite supply of self-control we have at our disposal on any given day? You can run out of these resources.

  Your brain is happy with every routine action that saves you a decision. The only catch is that you will glide through the days so routinely that, although you may have taken care of the what and the how, you have forgotten the why.

  Routines can benefit you, but they can also work against you. Are you still aware of which patterns and habits benefit you and which ones are mostly an energy drain? It’s fascinating to investigate the root system undergirding your daily routine and to understand what feeds it. Which routines contribute to who you want to be and how you want to live, and which ones are stealthily doing the exact opposite? Which habits stem from self-care, love, efficiency, or a higher purpose? Which habits are the result of fear, loss of control, or emptiness?

  Like everybody else, I have my ingrained ways. My autopilot takes over, and I fall back too easily on habits of which I’m no longer even aware. All my life I have, for example, been the president, treasurer, and secretary of the Order of the Guardians of Harmony. If there’s any discomfort or imbalance in a group, I will work hard to restore harmony. It’s a pattern that I’ve come to recognize in myself, and now I can gently call myself out on it: Hey, Eveline, this isn’t your responsibility. Just let it go.

  I’ve also amassed a vast collection of habits that don’t particularly harm me, although they don’t benefit me either: snoozing, procrastinating, and hoarding, to name but a few. They don’t really amount to anything in particular; neither do they promote true relaxation, by the way. But, well, it’s so comfortable not to contemplate your actions. Everything that can pass for business as usual means less work for the brain. Just tune out and go.

  That’s too bad, because patterns (how we react) and habits (what we do) often are so commonplace and ingrained that, to a large extent, they determine our reality. Through the sum of all these smaller and larger actions, we create the world around us. Gretchen Rubin wrote about the relationship between happiness and habits in her book Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives. She argues that 40 percent of our day is determined by habits and that most of those habits were formed and defined long ago. Think about your routine of going to work in the morning or visiting your parents on a Sunday. You follow these routines without giving them much thought.

  Rubin’s book is a call for careful consideration of which habits you’d like to have, and she argues in favor of consciously choosing certain habits instead of falling into them by chance or copying them from people who you think have their lives in order. “Copying other people’s routines won’t make us more creative or productive, even if these are the routines of geniuses; we should first learn our own nature and the habits that come with it,” Rubin argues. So developing a set of routines that really suit you and that will do something positive for you requires more than just clever copying and pasting.

  Changing a habit isn’t easy. No matter how many practical tips and to-do lists you may find online, in practice the gap between knowing and doing is a thousand times wider than on paper.

  Inspired by a lecture or a book, I’ve so often sworn a solemn oath that from now on I’d start doing everything differently, only to, slowly but surely, slide back into my old ways, in my head and in my life. I still haven’t managed to routinely prepare myself a super healthy meal for the next day. I still don’t take cold showers. I still don’t do my workout in the morning just to get it out of the way.

  I have, however, come across a few interesting and helpful eye-openers. First, it’s good to know that you can train willpower, like a muscle. Through practice, you can build up and strengthen the discipline needed to change yourself—so it really does make sense to start.

  Another helpful activity for bad days is trying to understand why you do what you do. A habit or a pattern that doesn’t really serve you (anymore) doesn’t need to be broken in a dramatic and sweeping fashion; sometimes it’s smarter to think or write for a while about a habit you have, to interrogate and understand it, instead of wanting to change it immediately. Get to know yourself first. That way, you aren’t only fighting symptoms, but also discovering their cause.

  Old habits can keep you trapped in unsatisfying patterns in your life, but establishing a routine can also have the opposite result: It can set you in motion. What helps me, if I want to add a new habit to my daily schedule, is connecting it to a bigger picture, making it part of a narrative. What is greater than this moment alone? What is the underlying value, the future dream, the long-term objective? All the flowers of all the tomorrows are in the seeds of today. What flowers am I hoping will bloom?

  Exercising, meditating, changing the way you eat, or reorganizing your days because “they” say it’s good for you is counterproductive. Like the yogi Vivekananda said: “Your path is good for you, but not for me. My path is good for me, but not for you.” The manifesting energy for truly changing your life always comes from within. You plant the seeds deep inside yourself.

  There are various opinions about how long it takes to master a new habit. Some say twenty-one days, others thirty. Another figure you’ll often hear is ninety days. I would say it takes as long as it takes. Don’t fool yourself with deadlines; they will only prove frustrating. You either want to change something or you don’t. Something is going to increasingly give you energy or increasingly cost you energy.

  I personally like to have a visual reminder of progress. Sometimes I hang a tape measure on my refrigerator. Every day that I manage to live up to a resolution, I cut off an inch. This keeps me occupied for about sixty days, if not longer. I used a measuring tape to represent the deadline for this book. It reminded me to keep moving forward and to not waste time with endless doubts. Inch by inch, day after day. And as you can see, the book got finished in the end. Don’t expect that if you start exercising today, you will be fit tomorrow. Clear out one drawer; you don’t have to do the whole cabinet right away. Remember: A turtle might be slow,
but it will eventually get to where it needs to be.

  The Art of Kaizen

  There is a Japanese philosophy called kaizen in which the path to change consists of teeny-tiny baby steps. A minute of meditation. Getting up five minutes earlier. One half glass less of soda. The only requirement is that you do it with love and dedication. The result is the payoff and not an end in itself. It’s not a project; it’s about the process. The trick is to enjoy what you find important and remain patient. Sometimes just visualizing what you want to achieve is already a first step in the right direction—after all, never underestimate the power of good intentions. Kaizen light is ideal for lesser days—especially the idea that a small change is better than no change. After all, watching Netflix for two hours is already a lot more wholesome than spending the entire day glued to your screen. And a glass of wine is still less than a whole bottle.

  Baby steps!

  // Let’s Talk about Beyoncé for a Minute

   Mapping who you are

  “I just am who I am.” It has always been difficult for me to relate to that sentence. It sounds so firm, so rigid and set in stone. My “self” today isn’t the same as it was yesterday or five years ago, let alone ten years ago. And then there’s the “self.” Wise philosophers, spiritual teachers, and artists all more or less agree that that is a tough cookie. It seems to be there, but as soon as you want to grab it, define it, or make it tangible, it appears elusive. So much has been written and said about the “I” and the “self” that studying this topic could keep you off the streets for decades.