Accept the sad days

5 min readOct 11, 2022

There are days when you wake up sad for no apparent reason. Ironically, I started writing this article on 10/10 which was World Mental Health Day, when I went to bed sad and woke up in the same state.

Definition of sad: adjective

: affected with or expressive of grief or unhappiness : DOWNCAS

: causing or associated with grief or unhappiness : DEPRESSING

There’s a whole list of why this could be happening. Maybe it’s circumstantial, maybe it’s a poor night’s sleep, maybe it’s medication, maybe it’s your body’s hormones. If you’re a woman, it may be your luteal phase. I know for me on Day 19–22 of my cycle I anticipate feeling a little “off”.

Rather than try to fight this normal emotion or try to scientifically figure out the reasoning, your energy is better spent practicing acceptance and learning what coping mechanisms best suit you.

I used to try to fight those days. I’d try extra hard to mask my sadness with a smile. I’d get dressed and purposely put extra time into how I looked. I thought if I looked perfectly put together I could fool myself and the world. You can fool the world, but you can’t fool your heart.

I’ve been a competitive athlete for more than half of my life. I mention this as a good portion of my audience are other competitive athletes, and I bet you can relate. This has taught me to condition my mind. I am capable of ignoring emotions and carrying on. I was once proud of this. I even took pride in that my whole world could be crumbling down, but I’d never miss a beat. I’d still excel at work, workouts, and no one could tell.

I mastered the art of seeming happy. I’d tell myself “fake it till you make it” and give myself dopamine hits to mask the sadness which usually involved trying to get a PR at the gym, buying myself something, or trying to achieve something on short notice.

When I started to learn about various facets of health and what truly makes a person “healthy”. I started realizing mental health takes #1 priority. You can’t physically be in a good place if you’re not mentally sound. Being a fitness professional I can craft a perfect plan but it’s up to the individual to take care of themselves.

Emotions are meant to be felt and dealt with, not ignored. That’s why the human species are so complex and unique, we have the gift of experiencing emotions.

My perspective has changed in that I now see being vulnerable as a sign of strength rather than weakness. Sadness and allowing myself to feel that emotion has slowed me down, forced me to really think about my life, my feelings, and who I surround myself with.

As I mentioned earlier, yesterday I woke up feeling sad. I wasn’t motivated and I just felt off. I couldn’t specifically pinpoint what caused this as nothing was wrong. I didn’t try to fight it for one of the first times in my life. I accepted it. I did my client check-ins which forced me to put my own sadness aside and focus on others. I’ve noticed this in itself can be very helpful. Although you still need to help yourself BEFORE you can help others.

I then decided the rest of my inbox could wait until tomorrow, I wouldn’t start any new projects and went for a hike at Valley of Fire State Park. I made the active decision to NOT respond to any e-mails, calls, or texts. Having limited service forced me to do this as not working in our digital age is often the more difficult route.

The hike forced me to reset and get out of my own head. Just like I trained my mind to once ignore sadness, if you train your mind to seek beauty, you’ll start discovering it more and more.

It’s the smile you offer to a stranger when you didn’t know they needed it most. It’s noticing the colors in the sky and feeling the breeze on your face. It’s your pet offering unconditional love. It’s a text with someone checking in on you. It’s taking time out of your day to help others.

Most importantly, it’s realizing life is so much more than just yourself.

How to deal with the sad days when they rear their head and spew their venom for no reason:

Find what grounds you. For me it’s obviously being outside and as far away from technology as possible. For you it may be drawing, cooking, curled up on the couch with a book, calling a loved one. Experiment with various methods.
Ask yourself what emotion you’re feeling. My boyfriend has helped me a lot with this. He often references books he’s read about understanding and defining emotions. Before I became aware of this I often resorted to just 3 emotions: happy, sad, or upset. You may not even realize what you’re feeling if you don’t take the time to look inwards.
Don’t try to fight it. When you learn to surrender and realize everything is just temporary, it gives you a clearer perspective that “this too shall pass”

*this is an opinion article, take what you wish from it.