Managing difficult days

Life is crazy for many of us. For others it can get crazy at times. Life will keep throwing things at you and leave you feeling that you are dodging bullets all the time. While shit is happening. here, I am talking about designing your life. Sounds simple. Yes, it is. My approach is to focus on things which I can control while keep dodging the bullets for things I cannot control. For the things I control I just look at stuff I need to avoid as it is the easiest during stressful times. Just by avoiding things which are in my control my life feels much more in control and helps me have day which have been designed by me

List of things which you control and which you can easily avoid

Manage your focus - You cannot win a battle unfocused   

• Don't get on the internet unless you have to respond to a situation 
• Stay away from social media unless I have to be on social media to respond to a situation 
• Don't consume any form of popular media unless you really need information from media

Manage your time and energy - You cannot win a battle low on resources 

• Don't waste time or energy on unnecessary stuff - sleep or sit idle staring at a blank wall if you have nothing better to but don't waste  time  and energy on stuff which takes away from your time and energy. Conserve time and energy to handle the stress of the day 
• Don't make any big purchase - you can go wrong making a big purchase decision under stress. Getting pushed into taking high impact decisions. Additionally, having money in the pocket always feels good during stressful times.

Manage your nutrition - You cannot win a battle with no/ low/ bad fuel in the tank 

• Avoid unhealthy food - eat simple food 
• Don't go thirsty - drink water 
• Stay away from alcohol (based on what I have heard about it - I don't consume alcohol so cannot vouch for it) 
• Would want you stay away from smoking 

 Manage your emotions - You cannot win a battle with negative emotions

• Don’t pick up unnecessary fights - fights should be entered into from a position of strength. A stressful is definitely not a day of strength for you. 
• Avoid negative people, relationships unless they are the cause of stress for that day (ban such people from your life) 
• Avoid getting emotional - have a stoic mindset  (the endurance of pain or hardship without the display of feelings and without complaint.)

I will pick up the difficult stuff in my list on days when things look smoother. 

My list of things to avoid on bad days is inspired from the concept of via negativa. I read about it in Antifragile: ThingsThat Gain from Disorder (Incerto) by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. 

I had read about Stoicism in some text book but was exposed to its real-life applications by Tim Ferriss.