A bad day at the office? Some are worse than others November 13, 2018 News We’ve all had a bad day at the office; even soldiers have them. The former soldier was speaking to an interviewer on Armistice Day. He had served in Afghanistan, but had had both his legs blown off by a bomb. ‘It was a bad day at the office,’ he said calmly. It was his use of the phrase that shocked me, a phrase I use so casually. His ‘bad day at the office’ had destroyed his life; shot it to pieces. Yet now he’s recovering and making a new life. He could have stayed forever with the negatives of events, with the ‘what-ifs’…but he has chosen not to. He’s rebuilding his life, he’s hopeful. Our mind can be a negative place; it can ruminate over small incidents for days. So sometimes we need to wipe the smear of negativity from our perceptions; for negativity can distort everything. Perhaps it’s best done at the end of the day, or each morning. We simply note it and then let go of it, like a bird released from our hand. Beyond the negative clouds there is blue sky; the bad day is not the end of the story. This remarkable soldier is a living witness to that.