Hey Reader,

A few months ago, I had three great weeks in a row.

I was sleeping well, staying consistent with my routine, keeping up with my work, and actually feeling a quiet sense of calm in my chest. I thought to myself, Okay, awesome. I’ve finally turned a corner. I’ve figured it out.

Then came a Thursday where I woke up with an unexplainable weight sitting right on my chest. I was irritable, exhausted, and by 3:00 PM, I found myself sitting on the edge of my bed staring at the floor, completely overwhelmed by tasks that took five minutes the day before.

My immediate second thought—right after the feeling itself—was pure frustration: Are you kidding me? Again? After all that work, I’m right back at square one.

If you’ve ever tried to work on your mental health, build better habits, or just get your head above water, you’ve probably felt that exact punch in the gut. We treat our well-being like a video game where we expect to level up, save the game, and never have to replay level one again.

So, when a hard day strikes after a stretch of good ones, it feels like a personal failure. We tell ourselves we’re back at zero.

Here is what I’ve had to learn the hard way: Healing isn’t a straight path upward, and having a bad day after a good one is not a relapse. It’s just being human.

When you’re trying to figure things out, you don’t need rigid, hyper-optimized perfection. You need realistic mental tools for the days when the ground feels shaky under your feet.

Here are three tools I use when a bad day threatens to convince me I’ve lost all my progress:

1. The “Upward Spiral” Model

When a bad day hits, our brain loves to draw a straight line straight down. We assume that if today is bad, tomorrow will be worse, and everything we built over the past month has evaporated.

Instead of imagining progress as a straight line going straight up, visualize it as a spiral staircase.

When you circle back around to a familiar bad feeling—anxiety, burnout, self-doubt—it feels like you’re in the exact same spot you were six months ago. But you aren’t on the same level. You’re looking at the same landscape, but you’re standing one tier higher.

• You have more awareness than you did last time.
• You know what tools work (and which ones don’t).
• You know that, unlike before, you actually survived it last time.

You aren’t going in circles; you’re climbing a spiral. Returning to a hard emotion doesn’t mean you failed—it just means you’re passing through that part of the staircase again with a little more context than before.

2. The “Weather Report” Check-in

One of the most exhausting things about a tough mental health day is the second layer of suffering: suffering because you’re suffering. We feel anxious, and then we get angry at ourselves for being anxious.

To break that feedback loop, try treating your inner state like the local weather forecast.

You wouldn’t stand outside in a rainstorm, shake your fist at the sky, and yell, “Why are you doing this to me? You’re ruining my entire life!” You’d just acknowledge it: It’s raining outside today. I should probably grab an umbrella and slow down.

When you wake up and feel heavy, treat it as data, not a moral judgment:

• “It looks like heavy fog today.”
• “Looks like high humidity and low pressure.”

When you name the feeling without judging yourself for having it, you stop fighting the weather. You accept that today is a rainy day, adjust your expectations, and let it pass through.

3. Minimum Viable Self-Care (MVSC)

On high-energy days, your self-care might look like an hour-long workout, meal prepping, reading a chapter of a book, and cleaning the kitchen.

On low-energy days, trying to execute that high-energy routine will crush you. This is where you switch to Minimum Viable Self-Care.

Ask yourself: What is the absolute bare minimum baseline I need to get through today without burning down my foundation?

• MVSC: A 5-minute stretch on the rug or walking to the mailbox.
• MVSC: Eating a frozen meal or a protein bar so you don’t run on empty.
• MVSC: Clearing off just the pillow so you have a clean place to lay your head.

MVSC isn’t giving up; it’s conserving power. It keeps your basic momentum going without forcing your engine to rev when the fuel tank is empty.

Something to keep with you

If today is heavy, please don’t punish yourself for it. A bad day does not erase a good month. A chaotic afternoon does not undo the quiet progress you’ve been making in the background.

Drop the expectation that you have to be fully healed, completely consistent, or perfectly calm every single day.

Take a breath, lower your standards for the next few hours, and let today finish itself. Tomorrow gets a fresh start.

P.S. - I host a podcast called Something for Everybody and you can listen here.​

Also, you can directly support me and my non-profit here. ​

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