I’m having an off day, and I will share what that means for me in real-time. I can’t think of a better time to talk about an off day than when I’m right in the middle of it. Shame has no place here, so let’s dive in.

Typically when I’m having an off day, my learned behavior is to recognize it, accept it, and wait for a new day. There is a lot of value in embracing where you are instead of resisting it, which we’ve talked about out before.

I recently shared how I shut down, stopped engaging in life and gave up. Looking back, I wish I would have shared and talked more openly about what I was experiencing because it’s cathartic to share in honest ways while still in the middle of the struggle. When someone else is willing to be vulnerable, it also helps me. So, friend, today, I feel off. I feel sad. My depression is hitting a little bit stronger today than it usually does. I’m struggling. I’ve been feeling the tension in my body and knots in my stomach all day. I can feel it deep in my gut.

My mind is overflowing with thoughts about EVERYTHING – work, life, what I want, what I need, business, friends, relationships, how to handle situations, how to be better. The thoughts are occupying so much space in my head.

When one thing feels off, everything feels off.

When I’m having an off day, everything goes wrong. It’s like catastrophe central. Everything is wrong. Everyone is wrong. I lose all my purpose, meaning, and motivation.

When purpose leaves, I move into a desperate need to see my entire life from a new perspective. I have to figure out a new plan or magical method to make my life okay. Something is out there that will make everything better, and I have to find it!

I want to change everything around me. I start to think that I have to redo and restructure my entire life. I need new strategies. New plans. New systems. When everything feels off, I feel everything has to change.

And that is today. That’s where I’m at. So what do I do? What do you do when you feel off? What do you do when you wake up, and you have these kinds of days where you would rather binge-watch Netflix or take a nap or ignore what’s important and what matters?

The end of an off day is worse than the beginning.

By the end of the day, do you know what I’ve accomplished? Absolutely nothing. Do you know what I have made progress on? Zilch. I often feel worse when I go to bed than when I woke up. I’m self-aware enough to know that’s not what I want.

I want to recognize that I’m feeling off. I want to generate awareness and do something about it. This isn’t because I feel obligated to push through when times get hard and shove down what I’m feeling in favor of hustle. (Please don’t do these things.)

However, I have to prioritize where I put my energy. When I feel off, my energy, unmonitored, typically goes into feeding all the “off-ness.” I feed the negative thoughts, the overplanning, the fake sense of control. I put a lot of energy into resisting anything that might help because I can’t see past the chaos.

By the end of the day, I’ve accomplished nothing of value. So then, I feel worse. I’ve been distracted. I’ve allowed distractions to become my primary entertainment of the day. I’ve avoided doing things that I know would be good for me.

Here’s the real kick to the gut: when I have an off day and let it win, it turns into two off days and then three off days and then four off days and then five off days. And then I’m six months down the road looking back and wondering what happened.

Maybe that’s not normal for you, but that’s my normal. So I’m very aware of it, and I know that I can’t keep letting my off days win. I can’t keep letting my off days call the shots.

Drag the off days forward.

I used to have this tiny ten-pound dog. If I took her on a walk that was too long, she would lay down on the sidewalk and refuse to move. My options were to drag her, which I would never do, or go pick her up and carry her home. Your off day can feel like this, except it’s not a ten-pound dog. It’s a full-grown dragon.

You’re dragging the dragon behind you because he refuses to cooperate (and you can’t carry it!) It’s exhausting, and you might not make it very far, but if you take a few steps forward, it means you didn’t let the dragon pull you backward. That’s the important piece to remember.

Dragging you off day forward will take so much energy, so we can’t expect to get very far. We’re not looking for leaps of progress. Maybe it’s just a half step forward if that’s what makes sense for you.

But at least at the end of the day, there was forward movement. You didn’t let the off day overtake you.

What does an off day look like for you?

Would you be able to recognize in real-time what an off day looks like? If you don’t know, you’ve got to start paying attention. It’s important to be aware of the moments when your body or intuition communicates that something is not right about today.

Let’s learn to recognize the times as they come when we don’t want to participate in our life because we feel exhausted. Let’s pay attention to the physical and emotional signals that manifest.

If you’re like me and have depression, your off days might resemble sadness. If you have anxiety, your off days might involve panic. Or maybe you feel stressed to the max. Whatever your off day looks like is important for you to know.

When I was around 19 years old, I moved to LA. (You can hear more of that story here.) That season in my life was filled with more off days than anything else. I was completely alone out there, and I spent my off days hiding in bed, lights off, curtains closed.

Or I spent my off days laying on the couch, watching mindless TV for hours and hours and hours. My off days were eating crappy food. My off days can be destructive in many different ways.

I’m throwing you a lifeline.

Trying to force your way through really tough days alone is exhausting on top of already feeling exhausted. So, if you feel exhausted, devastated, sad, and you don’t want to participate in life, I’m here to throw you a lifeline.

Here’s your lifeline. All you have to do today is one thing – one simple thing. This is so that by the time you get to the end of this awful, no good, terrible off day, you can go to bed feeling good about that one thing.

I promise you that doing one small thing is enough to drag the dragon forward a step. You don’t have to change everything or catastrophize everything. You don’t have to fix every bad habit or decision. Just do one small thing.

That’s your lifeline. That’s what I can give you. But like any lifeline, it only works if you grab onto it. Do the one thing.

Today, my one thing was creating this content. That is me participating in my life in a way that means something deeply to me. So at the end of this day, I will be able to say, “Hey, off day! You suck. But also, remember when I did that one that you really didn’t want me to do? Yeah. I’m pretty proud of myself. And next time you show up, I’m gonna try that again. And you know what? I might even try something bigger or better.”

If we want to break the habit of off days breaking us down, we have to do something different. Recognize what’s happening, take the lifeline, do one thing, and call it a day.