One of the few expressions I remember from my arabic classes يوم عسل ويوم بصل (Yaum Asal Yaum Basal), translated literally into “a day of honey and a day of onion”. What it really means is that some days are sweet and some days are kind of stinky (in my free interpretation).
As an expat Brazil, these kinds of mood swings (of self and others) are as frequent as the change of temperature and one has to be careful to balance the positive and negative.
One thing I learned from a friend was putting a nightly alert every day at 8pm, asking myself: “what has made me happy today?”. This type of silly little thing made me reflect and appreciate the small things that make our lives beautiful.
Even though now I normally just take a mental note, today, after one of those annoying days at work, when I first thought that I was being crazy and then realized that it was actually not me, but them, I really needed this reflection.
So the good things that happened today were:
1. Helped 2 colleagues to make their individual projects better
2. Got a free lunch and managed to align a room of 8 women to agree on a proposal
3. Had an awesome conversation with a gringo colleague about what should be the right way to drive cultural change in a discriminatory environment (being gender or race)
4. Had a great friend over and we talked about life, books we love, business ideas and potential collaboration
5. Got an uber interesting book to read: “Change by Design”
6. Discovered a delicious tea made locally (never happened before)
Feeling better already..
Grobetrotter 