We’ve all been there. You wake up late. The kids miss the bus. You forgot you had a meeting that was going to take you out of the office half the day. You rush to get your kids from practice, walk through the door with enough time throw something together for dinner, check homework and realize your little one’s got a fever and will probably need to stay home tomorrow.

You had every intention to have a good day and you certainly weren’t trying to have a bad day, but…life just happened.

You tell yourself, “No big deal. Everybody has a bad day once in a while,” except your one bad day seems to have turned itself into a week’s worth of stress that a two day weekend probably won’t fix.

So how do you get over your bad days and make sure they don’t turn into “seasons” of struggle? Here are a few tips:

1. Don’t let one bad day define your whole life.

If you’re like many people it’s easy to find yourself letting one bad day open up an onslaught of negative life memories; memories that remind you that your life’s always been bad, it’s always been hard, it’s always been stressed, or it’s always been unfair.

Then just as quickly as you begin thinking of all your past hurts, somehow you begin projecting all of those past feelings into your future. Sadly when this happens, you conclude that things may never get better, so you might as well just try to get through the day.

The good news is that one bad day doesn’t have to define your whole life.

But the bad news is that a series of bad days can drastically affect the outcome of your life. Here’s how.

Emotions are linked together pulsating at frequencies in your mind and heart unrelated to time. For example, when we experience sadness, stress, or disappointment, our emotions cannot actually tell if the sadness is a result of something we experienced today, a minute ago, two hours from now, or 20 years in to the future.

Therefore, if in the present a certain emotion “hits” our conscious let’s say, it opens up a realm of unconscious thoughts, emotions and feelings that have accumulated throughout our whole lives (both in reality and in our imagination), and then gets simultaneously projected into our future.

In other words, feelings don’t know time.

• Ever watched a beautiful sunset and been moved to tears and don’t know why?

• Ever seen a picture of a winning football team and felt happy even though you never played?

• Ever watched a horror film and jumped at a scary scene?

None of these experiences were necessarily “real” to you, but they evoked an emotion that was connected to something you either once imagined or once felt.

Therefore, one of the most important exercises you can do for yourself when you’re having a bad day is to (as much as possible), keep your feelings “locked” in the present.

Here’s what that means. Whenever you’re experiencing stress, depression, anxiety, worry, fear, etc. — tell yourself, “This feeling is not a result of a hundred bad days before today. Just because I feel this way today, doesn’t mean I have to feel this way tomorrow. I’m just feeling this way now, and my feelings don’t have to define me.”

By “locking” your feelings in your present, you allow yourself the grace to be a human with emotions now, but don’t allow your emotions to dictate the outcome of your whole life.

2. Make a conscious effort to guide (not control) your day Instead of Having your day control you.

If you’re used to coping with stress as described above then you probably find yourself going into autopilot mode when you’re having a bad day.

After all, a lot of bad days are simply the result of situations which are basically out of our control. We know we can’t control everything that happens to us anyway, so we bury our emotions and move on, and let the chips fall where they may. Because let’s be honest, who has time to psychoanalyze themselves when things hit the fan?

However, even though feelings emerge in us somewhat unexpectedly when evoked by familiar situations, we CAN change how we feel.

The process of being able to consciously change how you feel, in fact, is what popularized “method acting” during the 1930s.

When actors discovered that they were capable of swapping their own emotions with that of their characters’ by identifying with their character’s life experiences, a new era of motion picture entertainment was born.

So while you can’t completely control the situations that will come up during any given day, you can control your reaction to them, namely through the process outlined above.

The more often you practice this skill of self-talk whenever your day takes an unexpected turn that negatively affects your emotions, the more easily you’ll be able to guide your day into a better outcome and not let it get the best of you.

3.) Take inventory of your life and prioritize the things that matter most.

This may seem like an oversimplified solution to a problem, but in the heat of the moment, it’s easy to focus too much on less important things.

• Are you desperate to pick up on your binge of “Stranger Things” so you can finally relax, or is it better to talk with your son about his day as he gets ready for bed?

• Should you stop by your husband’s office unexpectedly during his break, or go pick up the outfit your daughter needs for her choir concert tonight?

• Do you really need to get the whole family up on a Sunday to go to church, or can’t you just get the same thing from watching the live-stream?

These all seem to be very innocuous choices, yet choosing some activities over the others can have dramatically different effects to your life over time.

Unfortunately, some think, “I can do it all!” and wind up in a crisis of identity feeling even more depressed and burdened when they discover they really can’t do it all.

So you’ve got to learn how to let go of things that in the large scheme of life aren’t that important. But act on the things that may seem justifiable to overlook now, but could have a major impact on your life in the future.

Failure to make changes simply because you’re afraid of disappointing people, will eventually lead to decision fatigue, and decision fatigue if left unchecked leads to decision paralysis. Once decision paralysis sets in, it feels like your life is defined by a series of bad days.

4.) Get Some Perspective. It Could be worse.

As cliche as it sounds, despite any number of bad things that could go wrong in any given day, you could have it worse.

No matter what you’re going through, however, you never have to look very far to find someone who’s got it worse off than you.

Now, I’m not saying that some people don’t find themselves in terrible and tragic situations. But the point is, you’ll never overcome the bad in your life by focusing on how bad it is. You overcome evil with good (Romans 12:21).

What that means is that each one of us has the ability to focus on what we have, or focus on what we lack. And the bible is very clear what happens when we focus on what we lack.

Jesus taught in Matthew chapter 6 that the eyes are a “lamp” to our bodies – “If your vision is clear, your whole body will be full of light. But if your vision is poor, your whole body will be full of darkness.” (v. 22-23)

This principle has been verified over and over again by countless people all over the world, who by even conservative standards, have had extraordinarily difficult lives, yet still experience joy, happiness and a sense of well-being because they choose to see the good in life.

Have a hard time putting yourself in other people’s shoes? Take a quick trip by your local homeless shelter, offer to lead a small group at your church, visit your kid during his lunch hour. Every time you step away from the routine of your own life, you gain a much deeper appreciation for what someone else’s life might be like.

Do that often enough, and next time your bad day seems to be careening out of control, you’ll be able to focus on the here and now, appreciate what you’ve got, and give yourself the grace to start over fresh the next day.