50 People Who Are Having A Terrible Day At Work

It has happened to all of us. The CEOs, the interns, the freelancers, nobody is immune to a bad day at work. And when it feels like everything is falling out of your hands and your head is about to explode, you look at the clock, and it says there’s still hours left until the day becomes history. So in order to find out what exactly we can do to help our miserable selves struggling with a bad day at work, Bored Panda reached out to Christine Mitterbauer, licensed and ICF-approved career coach and serial entrepreneur, who was happy to share some useful tips and insights.

“When you’re in the moment and this happens, the best thing is to stop what you’re doing, don’t say another word and excuse yourself to go to the bathroom,” Christine said and added that the last thing you want to do is explode in front of your boss and colleagues. “Doing this solves the problem in the short term, but to avoid this type of situation in the long term, there are a few strategies you could practice.”

“Assuming you’ve excused yourself and have found a private space, whether it’s the bathroom or outside in the fresh air, the first thing to do is to get your breathing under control. Our breathing is intimately linked with our feelings and emotions, so by breathing in deeply and exhaling slowly, you immediately start calming your angry emotions down,” Christine said. In fact, the career coach argues that it’s impossible to be hot-tempered and angry while breathing slowly and deeply. “Do this 10 times,” Christine suggested.

“Another thing to do is to remind yourself that everyone always has a reason for acting and speaking the way they do, a reason that makes sense to them. It might make no sense to you and irritate or anger you, but by always trying to put your mind into that of the person who has angered you, you start losing some of that anger. No one is being mean or irritating on purpose.”

Obviously you want to minimize the bad days you have at work, Christine says, as if there’s too many bad days, there may be consequences. “This can indeed affect your confidence as you start questioning yourself and your capability to do the job,” she said.

Another great tip to make sure you don’t get yourself to the moment of explosion at work is, before accepting the job, to “try as much as possible to get a feel for the kind of people you’ll be working with, as associating with personalities that clash with ours can result in too many uncomfortable and angry interactions.”

Having said that, the career coach assured our readers that unless you’re a Buddhist monk, pretty much everyone will have bad days at work from time to time, even if they mostly love their job. “Speaking about Buddhist monks. One long-term strategy to really get your temper under control is to practice mindfulness meditation.”

It’s an excellent method to taking back the control you feel like losing when a bad day at work gets you. “This is a way of noticing your thoughts for what they are, ‘just thoughts,’ instead of having the thoughts control you. The better you become at this, the quicker you’ll pick up your angry thoughts in those crucial moments, and you will be able to push them away before they have a chance to consume you and make you feel like you’re exploding.”

Christine said that you could practice 10-15 min a day and see results after just a few weeks. So it’s definitely worth trying it out!