times when you shouldn’t feel bad about your life – for the girls

We all go through ups and downs. Here are some circumstances when you shouldn’t dwell on these negative feelings.

Have you ever found yourself just feeling like life isn’t on your side? You start to compare yourself, you feel behind, and you just feel like it just… sucks?

I know that have moments like these where I feel bad about my life. I start feeling anxious, stressed, or upset, and that life isn’t just going my way.

One day, I came across this post that said “don’t trust how you feel about your life after 9 pm”. Once I read that, I started to realize that there is truth behind it. We shouldn’t trust how we feel about our lives after 9pm or 10pm because it’s at night, and our mind isn’t at its full thinking power.

It reminded me of the episode from How I Met Your Mother where the rule “Nothing good ever happens after 2pm” was introduced. Needless to say, there are circumstances where you shouldn’t feel bad about your negative feelings or your life in general.

I’ve uncovered 6 circumstances when you shouldn’t feel bad about your life and not trust those negative feelings you have. If you have found yourself feeling bad about your life at some point, complemented by those negative feelings, keep reading.

1 – After you’ve scrolled on social media

I feel like this is so obvious. Social media, in my opinion, is one of the easiest places to fall into the trap of comparison.

So, if you have scrolled on social media for some amount of time, it’s easy to start comparing yourself to other people. I have to remind myself that everyone (even myself) mainly post their highlights. Hence, when we’re comparing ourselves, we are comparing our hidden challenges to public highlights.

That’s why it is important to remember that the more we scroll, the more content we get exposed to. If they are content that makes us feel bad about ourselves, we subconsciously end up making ourselves feel bad even more.

If you started to feel bad about your life because you just had a scroll on social media, may be worth just ignoring it and reminding yourself that people mainly share their highlights over their struggles.

---

RELATED: Ways to Have a Better Relationship With Social Media

---

2 – When you’re on your period/luteal phase

For all the girls, you know this feeling.

We feel moody, sad, angry, and feel like life isn’t going our way. Then a few days or a week later, we get our period and realize that they were PMS symptoms all along.

I don’t know why I’m always surprised by this every month because the same thing happens every time I’m about to approach the time of my period.

This is why I started using a cycle tracking app for tracking which stage I am in my cycle, and not being surprised by my sudden meltdowns, stress, and cries. I use an app called Moody (not sponsored) which gives you a daily forecast of where you are at in your cycle and even tells you how your energy and mood are. This is extremely helpful in building a better relationship with myself because I understand myself better.

Even though cycle trackers aren’t always 100% accurate, it is worth tracking your cycle to understand your energy levels and moods. So, the next time you feel bad about your life, you can check your cycle tracker and maybe see that you are approaching your period.

3 – After 9pm

As established earlier, “don’t trust how you feel about your life after 9pm”. If it’s not 9pm, then it’s any time at the end of your day when you don’t have a lot of thinking power anymore, and you just need to relax.

I stick with the 9pm rule. If I find myself crying or feeling stressed at 9pm, I try my best to remind myself that it’s late at night, I’m tired, and I should get some sleep to start fresh.

Regardless of what time of the night it is, there will be an instance where our thinking capacity isn’t at 100%, and we shouldn’t stress about decisions at that time. I’ll admit that sometimes we can’t help it, but it’s always worth reminding yourself that maybe you just need a good night’s sleep.

---

RELATED: How to Ruin Your Night Routine

---

4 – After an event that has occurred beyond your control

And I mean anything that had happened that you didn’t have any control over. Whether this would be a lay-off, a loss, or even something as simple as a traffic jam.

For example, when I got laid off from my job, I started feeling bad about how my life was going. Even though the situation was beyond my control and had nothing to do with my performance, I had negative feelings that were hard to escape from.

Looking back, the time and energy I placed in feeling bad about myself could’ve been put into something more productive. However, I learned my lesson that there will be things in our lives that will happen beyond our control, and the only thing we can control is our response to it.

Don’t get me wrong, it is still okay to feel bad and let it suck. You shouldn’t suppress your emotions, as long as you don’t stay parked there forever. My favorite saying and unique growth lesson is”let it suck, then let it go”.

5 – When you haven’t done something self-care related

Self-care includes some sort of physical movement, relaxation, and anything that recharges your batteries.

There have been multiple times when I felt stressed, anxious, and bad about myself only because I hadn’t done anything for myself all day. For example, when I was studying, working, and volunteering during the pandemic, I felt burnt out and started beating myself up for not being able to handle it all. The truth was, I hadn’t done anything for myself to relax and recharge

A good starting point is having some go-to self-care activities in mind, and making sure that you know when you will do it. I schedule self-care in the mornings (with my morning walk) and at night (during dinner) and it helps “charge” my batteries and prevents burnout.

So, if you are feeling bad about your life and have negative feelings because it’s overwhelming, it may be time to do some self-care.

---

RELATED: Quick Guide of TIMED Self-Care Activities

---

6 – When you’ve been busy

Following along from the previous point, if you haven’t done something for yourself all day, it’s easy to have those negative feelings and feel bad about how your life is going.

This is especially true if you’ve been crazy busy. When you’re busy and have a lot on your plate, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and question whether you can succeed in handling it all.

When I was a law student, I had my fair share of busy periods where I felt overwhelmed and questioned my capacity. Looking back, it’s reasonable to feel bad because having lots on your plate pressures you even more to have it together.

It all goes back to what we established in the previous point, you need to do something for yourself, anything self-care related. When you’re busy, we tend to be biased on how much we “have our life together”.

Of course, you can go to basics have strategize your productivity and time management to ensure that you are organized, on track, and prevent burnout. But don’t forget to have some self-care time too.

Take a SMALL STEP

Here are some small steps you can take to ensure that you don’t let these circumstances determine how you feel about your life:

1. Social Media Tips: I suggest reading this blog post for tips on how to have a better relationship with social media. It is possible to use it in a way that you don’t compare yourself too much to other people.
2. Start tracking your cycle: If you haven’t done so yet, it’s worth tracking now. Of course, various circumstances (e.g. irregular periods) may make it tricky. When my periods used to be irregular, I relied more on certain triggers/feelings/moods that I associated with my PMS symptoms coming, as opposed to a day in my cycle (e.g. Day 1, 2, etc).
3. Establish a relaxing night routine: If you find yourself feeling stressed at night because of the things happening in your life, try establishing a night routine that can help you relax instead and set yourself up for the day ahead.
4. Create a list of go-to self-care activities: I suggest having some options for self-care activities that take 5 minutes, to longer ones such as an hour. These go-to self-care activities are great for the days you have a “bad day”, you’re busy, or you just need to recharge your batteries to prevent burnout. I have some self-care activities in this blog post.
5. List down your current priorities and order them: When I feel like I have a lot on my plate, a simple technique is listing down my priorities, order them, and schedule/plan my day based on the list. This ensures that I get my most important things done, even if I don’t have time to do everything.

To Wrap Up

I want you to remember that it’s still okay to have those negative feelings when there are life challenges. It’s just that sometimes our mind can be our biggest obstacle when it comes from overcoming those negative feelings. That’s why we outlined all these circumstances to remind you that there are times when your perception can be bias when it comes to how you view your life.

If you need some resources to help with your personal growth, the free resources library has a bunch of them! You can sign up to check it out here.

In the meantime, lets just take it one day at a time.

-Lauren 🙂

P.S I suggest you read these blog posts next:

• Mental Health Day Checklist: feel better with these 7 things
• The Top Habits to Master All Your Life Domains
• 7 Toxic Habits to Cut This Year

Share This Blog Post Here:

---

---

CONNECT with ME!! 🗯

Instagram:

@laurenlbarri (blog Instagram)

---