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This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at SJSU chapter.

Bad days happen and if you’ve noticed, their occurrences seem to be a lot more frequent as you get older. They seem to come weekly for me and when they do, the lack of energy and enthusiasm to do my best in school, my personal life and work hover dangerously close to the bare minimum. Instead of a bad day, I’ve labelled the past week as a bad week. One bad day snowballed into the next and the momentum of things going wrong dragged along this way until the week came to an end. It helped me realize that taking some effort into taking care of myself each day was so important.

My problems stem from lack of sleep – short and sweet. Sleeping early or taking naps in the middle of the day are completely out of question for me as I’m sure it is for many of us. But these four little pointers gave me enough of a boost to keep going.

Start your day off with a few gulps of water before doing anything else and don’t rush through drinking it. After a couple minutes, it should be able to give you just the right amount of energy to build up on. Water refreshes the cells and serves as the fuel for them to function – going back to basics on this, it’s the ideal starting block to get things going for the day.

List down the things that you need to in order of importance. There are some miniscule things that can still be pushed off to the next day – mark these down and get the urgent ones out of the way. When you’re tired, the tendency to scramble through starting a little bit of everything gets higher, and most of the time they don’t work. Just like that, your mood is going to go down the drain. Look at the list and take things on one at a time. You may realize that after organizing, you don’t have an amount on your plate that you can’t handle. Even if you do, it gives you a big sense of relief when you can finally check the things on your list off one by one.

Talk to somebody about your week. Sometimes we need a little ranting session to lift the heavy load of your shoulders whether it be your partner, friend or family member. Bad days tend to prompt us to keep to ourselves, when sometimes the best cures can be found in what someone else is going to say.

Finally, give yourself a little treat to commemorate how you’ve been progressing through the day. It can be some time to watch a video, getting your favorite food or just hanging out with someone important to you. Breaks are necessary regardless of how busy you are, and without them you’ll find yourself going in circles. So, find a way to plan short breaks at intervals and fill this time up with things or people that you really love.

A 3rd Year Journalism student at San Jose State University. I enjoy writing about an array of things, branching from opinions and thoughts about life to current happenings occurring in the world today. I appreciate being in tune with my feelings and my opinions through my work, more often than not observations of the people and situations around me. I have a dream of allowing people to capture the dark and golden elements of life through the things that I create, be it through writing, pictures or videos.
Shellise West is the current campus correspondent at San Jose State University. Majoring in journalism with a minor in radio, television and film she plans to not fall short of fulfilling her dream as a sports reporter. A Bay Area native her hobbies include singing, dancing and listening to music. Follow Shellise on Twitter @SoulfulPenned.