Things to do when you feel shit

How to get out of your head and into the world

We all have those days when we feel a little wobbly. Maybe we couldn’t sleep. Maybe we had a fight with a loved one. Maybe we received some disappointing news. Maybe life seems to be particularly against us, and it was all three. On such days we wake up and think, “I feel so shit. I need to do something”. But we have no idea what. We curl up in bed like a fetus and wallow in self-pity. This list of thoughts and ideas is for those days.

By all means, go on the bed and agonize, but after a sensible amount of time of scrolling and overthinking and whining, get up, read this list and turn your day around. You have the power to.

Illustration by Gemma Correll via Pinterest

• As I said, this list is for things to do, not things not to do, but by God, please don’t scroll on social media. Social media makes us feel shit eight out of ten times on a good day, let alone on a bad one. The last thing you need when you feel bad is to be shown how everyone seems to be presently having the time of their life, with their perfect partner and their perfect dog in their perfect bodies at their perfect home. It’s quite impossible then not to feel as if you’re some grand, miscalculated anomaly among humankind and so, so utterly alone. But you’re not. We all have shitty days. We just don’t show them on Instagram. ❤️

• The one thing that works like magic for me is going out for a drive while listening to some good music. I don’t know, it’s something about music combined with moving fields, trees, signs, car lights and speed that just helps me zoom out on things and appreciate them for what they are. Even if they are a painful, confusing mess. That has its beauty too.

• But you don’t have to go out for a drive. You can just play some music—on your AirPods, on YouTube, on the TV. While showering, while puttering around, while lying on the floor. Never underestimate music’s healing powers. It can give us our lifeforce energy back. If you don’t know what to play, try this or this.

• If you’re going to keep lying on the bed despite your better judgement, lie on the floor at least. It’s grounding. It’s hip. It’s almost yoga.

• If your emotions or thoughts get in the way of your planned productivity for the day, and if you can afford it, clean your house or go pick up those parcels or go to the gym or do something else physically productive that might be useful. In other words, tackle some of those things towards the end of your to-do list that you never quite get to but would still feel great about ticking off (maybe even more so because you’ve postponed them for so long).

• Call a friend. See a friend. Connect. Connection is the antidote of misery. It’s the healing balm for so many of our troubles. From a biological perspective connection moves your autonomic nervous system to a parasympathetic state in which you’re able to relax, digest and regenerate. It’s your nervous system’s happy place.

• If you don’t want to/can’t connect with a person, connect with the environment. Connect with nature. Go for a walk and look out at the world. Listen to the birds chirping. Smell the ground. Pay attention. Be dazzled. This practice, also known as “orienting” (without the flowery bits added for literary effect), is a form of neurosensory exercise or “somatic experiencing” that is super useful in helping us to process trauma or feel more regulated. All animals are naturally very connected to their environment; it’s only humans that, because they’re trapped in survival stress and dysregulation, can go on for days without really noticing what’s around them. (It’s also why teenagers often don’t clean their rooms.)

• If part of the reason you feel shit is because you feel a bit like Sisyphus rolling his boulder—like you find yourself trapped in the same situation again and again and feel as though you’re not making progress—this quote might be useful: “No man ever steps in the same river twice for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” – Heraclitus

• Think about all the places in the world. All the people. Think about the ferry boats with their loud horns passing through the English Channel. The china cups dangling in their saucers as an Italian waitress picks them on her tray from some café on a piazza. The shouting of boys playing football on a green field. Some important men in white shirts holding some important meeting and looking at a pie chart on a whiteboard. Someone surfing, the sound of waves crashing. All these things happening simultaneously. Somewhere it’s dark, somewhere it’s bright. Somewhere it’s freezing, somewhere it’s sweltering. The world is so big and so vast and it continues to exist, regardless of me and you and our petty problems, every second of every minute of every day. We are but a tiny speck of dust in a grand design. I find something about this comforting.

• Think about all your shittiest days and how you made it through.

• All your big fears that didn’t happen.

• Make a gratitude list. I hate to be so cliché, but it really f*ing works. That’s why everyone goes on and on about it. I won’t bore you with the science of it or how our brains are programmed to focus on the negative. Just take the pen and write three things down. Nobody will see, I promise. I’ll pretend I don’t know. Here are mine: My pink nails. The coffee date with a friend I have in a few hours. My delicious chocolate protein shake.

• Also helpful: remembering that the learning process is always far more valuable than the end result.

• If you’re feeling a bit cynical, a bit prosaic, if you’ve lost some of your belief in magic, think about this: you currently find yourself on a big rotating globe that’s sitting opposite a big rolling ball of fire in a galaxy of stars.

• Do a body scan. The Calm and Headspace apps have some great ones. Even if you do them just for a couple of minutes, in the end you’ll still feel like a Buddhist monk on his or her way to spiritual enlightenment and just so much superior than everyone for doing it. Maybe not so spiritual after all… oh well, it still works!

• When we feel angry/hurt/slighted it’s easy to see things in black and white and people as “good” or “bad”, a tendency that psychologists call “splitting”. It’s never that simple, though, and those “bad” people are still the ones we love most of the time for their wonderful qualities. Make a list of the things you appreciate about them. Maybe tell them. From all I know, no action has stronger positive ripple effects than kindness.

• Put on a nice outfit. Put on some makeup. A bad day is never as bad if you look your best. This is something I learned from my mama and it works a charm every. single. time.

• As Matt Haig reminds us: Being > doing.

• Read a poem by Mary Oliver. She’s one of my favourite poets, and her poems always manage to inspire me, to spark a gratitude for life, to awaken a desire to get lost in the woods and fall in love with the world. You can read her here and here. Tell me, what is that you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

• Watch Notting Hill or Four Weddings and a Funeral.

• No six-pack, bum or complexion is worth not eating pizza, cinnamon rolls or French fries for. So, eat some.

• Read David Foster Wallace’s This Is Water. If I had to read a single thing for the rest of my life it would be this. Here, generously, I share a quote with you (you can read the whole text online and thank me for pointing you to it, later):

  “But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom.”

• Drink lots of water. It’s always a bit of revelation when you first discover how many of our physical discomforts were simply caused by not drinking enough water.

• If possible, sit in the sun (wear SPF).

• Life will not always feel the way it feels now. In fact, tomorrow won’t feel the way it feels today.

• Call your grandma. Or your auntie. Or that slightly older, wiser woman that you feel safe talking to. She knows. She’s been there. She loves you regardless. And you’re lucky to have her.

• Make a vision board. Or solve a puzzle, or colour in a colouring book or thread a necklace. Do something your inner child wants to do. We should pay more attention to these little wise men, our inner children, and honour them and respect them and listen to them. Because they hold the map to our most coveted and happiest lives. If you don’t trust me, here’s Carl Jung: “What did you do as a child that made the hours pass like minutes? Herein lies the key to your earthly pursuits.”

One thing that I am always surprised about on such shitty days is the human renewable capacity to overcome hardship, to turn a day around, to get back up after being knocked down, to forget and to move on. But there’s a caveat. You need to have the strength to do one single thing: Get out of your head and into the world. I hope you do. ❤️

To Reality
With love,
N.