The Quote That Helps Me on My Hard Mental Health Days

As I have learned over the past couple months, it’s harder to let things go and go with the flow than it is to hold onto whatever bad things are happening in my life. In the last month, I’ve had experiences with people I was am not fond of and I have had to learn how to bite my tongue and be the bigger person in the situation instead of losing myself. I also have had to face the one person I never want to face: myself.

For so long I beat myself up for not being perfect and being ugly when both of those things were not true and completely unrealistic. They both were factors in my low self-esteem that chipped away at my relationships and made it harder for me to believe the compliments people would give me. I couldn’t be happy with myself and walk away from things that didn’t make me happy. I let all of the unrealistic and completely untrue things I internalized were true rule me and pull me down into self-hate and self-doubt.

I can say now I am working on building myself up. It’s a hard habit to break when you have always been your own enemy instead of your best friend. There are many days where sometimes I can fall back into bad habits and be hateful to myself. These are hard days because I will have to fight with myself to regain the ground I earned. These are days when I find it easier to lose energy and give in to many of the demons that lurk in my mind. Then there are other days where I can look in the mirror and see past all the flaws and everything and see the good and great things about myself and go through my day, content. These are easier days and I find it easier to breathe and my mind feels lighter.

It all comes down to this phrase, “It’s just a bad day, not a bad life.” It reminds me no matter what it’s just a bad day and it’s only 24 hours, not my entire life. I have recently started using this to keep me from bringing up the past. It reminds me it was something that happened and it may have not happened or ended the way I would have liked, but overall it doesn’t make my life bad and it doesn’t make me bad. What it did was teach me a lesson and the lesson may have been harsh but it turned out alright in the long run. So it may be bad right now, but it won’t end up that way.

So, I make some mistakes and I take some wrong turns. I’m sometimes upset and feel bad and like it’s not going to get better. I ask myself, OK, are you breathing? Is your heart beating? Are you able to get up? If I answer yes, I already have the power to make things better. It’ll turn around all I really have to do is make the choice to continue. Because I truly believe “It’s just a bad day, not a bad life.”

We want to hear your story. Become a Mighty contributor here.

Thinkstock photo via Olarty.