Five minutes to
reset a bad day

The point of this isn't to make a bad day good. It's to stop a bad hour turning into a bad evening, and a bad evening landing on the people at home who had nothing to do with it.

1. Stop the vehicle. Literally or otherwise.

   Don't carry on straight into the next thing. Pull up, sit down and shut the door. One minute of deliberately doing nothing forms the foundation to build upon with the other actions.

2. Breathe out longer than you breathe in.

   In through the nose for four. Out through the mouth for seven. Six rounds. If your hands are shaking or your chest is tight, do twelve. This is the bit that actually shifts your body out of fight-or-flight.

3. Name it in one sentence.

   Out loud if you're alone. "I'm furious because I got blamed for something that wasn't mine." Just one sentence; that's all it takes. You are trying to convert a mood into a fact, because facts can be dealt with and moods can only be endured.

4. Ask: will this matter in a fortnight?

   Sometimes the honest answer is yes, and that's useful to know — it tells you this needs proper attention and not a "car-park reset". However, it's usually a no. Either way, you've just put the thing in proportion, which is most of the battle.

5. Pick the next right thing, and make it small.

   Ring someone, drink some water, eat something. or walk to the end of the road and back. A surprising amount of "bad day" is low blood sugar in a bad mood.

If every day is a bad day

Then this one-pager isn't the answer, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. A tool like this is for weathering the odd rough one. If rough is the normal setting — for weeks rather than days — that's worth talking to someone about: a coach, a counsellor, or your GP.