Facing a Bad Day at Work? Just Remember These Three Tips to Make a Fiesta Out of Your Funk

While bad days happen to everyone at one time or another, it’s how you deal with those days that determine those who have really bad days and those who somehow manage to never seem to have a bad day, even when bad things happen to them.  Just remember these three tips, and you’ll find that you have a hard time remembering the last time you had a really bad day at work.

The first tip is to have a good attitude.  The popular cliché, “Your attitude is your altitude” is actually very good advice for everyday living, including in the workplace.  No matter how bad your day is, if you at least try and have a good attitude about it, somehow you’ll find that you think about the bad parts less and start seeing the good parts more, whether it’s at work, home, or wherever you may be.

How do you find a good attitude when everything around you is going bad?  There are several ways.  You can imagine how much worse it could be or try and think of someone else that has had, or currently has it worse than you.  Another thing to think about if you are having a horrible day at work is all of the millions of people that are unemployed and wish that they could just have a job, even if they had to have a horrible day every once in a while.  Another way to improve your attitude is by looking at the positive side of seemingly bad things that happen to you.  Lets say that you’re about to make a sale on the phone with a customer and they change their mind.  Instead of getting mad and dwelling on the lack of a sale, focus on trying that much harder the next time and tell yourself that you will get two sales to make up for the one you lost.

Maybe you’re still finding it hard to have a good attitude and the first tip just doesn’t seem to be helping?  The second tip I recommend is giving service and having a good attitude about your service.  You might wonder what I mean by service, and how exactly it can help you make a bad day into a good one.  Let’s say that someone does something that starts to put you in a bad mood at work, whether it’s to you, or to someone else.  Your first initial reaction would be to not associate with that person and maybe even give them the cold shoulder.  What you should try to do instead is help them out with what they’re working on, and do it in a genuinely nice way.  Don’t try and sound like you know better, but try and be their friend.  Ask if they need help with any of their work and try and give them that help when they need it.  Of course, this doesn’t have to be drawn out help that takes a long time, and it doesn’t mean that you should do their work for them.  By helping them, or at least offering to help, you show them that you care about what they’re doing.  This might end up putting them in a better mood, as well as yourself, all as a result of being there for that person.

So you’ve now tried tip one and two, and neither one seems to be working?  The third and final tip I have is to have patience.  If you’re trying to have a good attitude and trying to help out those who need it, and you still feel like your day is a horrible one, remember to have patience and continue to try the first two tips.  Sometimes when you face a bad day, nothing makes it go away completely, but if it’s a bad day at work, remember patience, because if nothing else, you can look forward to going home at the end of the day and forgetting about the bad day that you had and starting over with a better day tomorrow.

Remember that not every day is going to be loads of fun and a blast, no matter what job you may have.  Just like life, you’re going to face ups and downs.  It’s in how you face your bad days that you show your true character, both at work and home.  Try following the above three tips of having a good attitude, giving service at work (especially to those you struggle with), and having patience, even when everything seems to go wrong.  If you do, I’ll bet that you’ll notice fewer bad days and be able to enjoy your work a lot more each and every day.

Tags: Advice, attitude, bad days, Employment, patience, service

Tackling Your Problems at Work: What I Learned from Digging up Ivy

You’ve probably seen ivy that covers a hillside or someone’s yard, maybe even your own.  But as for me, I hate the stuff, and I mean HATE it, with a passion.  It takes over and has huge root systems that steal all the water from the other plants nearby, not to mention that I just think it’s kind of ugly.  The funny thing is that now as I think about the experience, there is a great lesson to be learned from my experience.

The other day I was digging up some ivy with the help of my family, and it took several hours to pull up and cut it’s almost 6 inch diameter roots out of the ground.  It would be impossible to dig all of the ivy up at once or just pull all of the roots up in one big pull.  Instead, digging was required, as was prying with the shovel, using a bar to pry it up, and finally sawing the ends of the roots off with a hacksaw.  In short, it took several smaller steps to actually remove all of the ivy roots from the section of the yard that we were working on.  It also required working together and figuring out where the best places to pry up on it and cut it were, and weighing all of the options in getting it out.

What does all this have to do with tackling your problems at work, you might ask?  Just like when we dug up the ivy a step at a time, your problems at work have to be solved the same way, a step at a time.  Trying to instantly fix problems at work is impossible, and so every problem has to be broken down into smaller steps and each of those steps needs to be carefully taken as you work on fixing your problems at work.  It’s important also to self-evaluate your progress, as well as ask for constructive criticism from others, just like we all contributed our opinions and helped each other dig up the ivy.  You obviously can’t use all of the opinions in solving your problems, so you just have to use your best judgment and go forward after weighing all the options.

What kinds of problems are typically found at work?  There are so many problems that I can’t list them all here, but some typical ones are: communication problems, performance problems, and hitting a wall in a creative project.

Each of the above problems can be solved in most cases, given time, patience, and by breaking up the problems into smaller steps.  Just like we broke up the problem of digging up the ivy into smaller steps, doing the same in your work will help you overcome almost any problem that you might face in the workplace.

Tags: ivy, life lessons, persistence, problems, resolving problems, solving problems, steps, teamwork, working together