The Bad Day Playbook #author Gayle Smerdon

 THE BAD DAY PLAYBOOK: What to do when everything sucks

Bad Days happen. The trick is not to pretend they don't, but to have a plan when they do.

The Bad Day Playbook is your calm companion and usable game plan for those times when life flattens your spirit. It helps you notice when you're slipping into the spiral, take gentle control, and make small, meaningful shifts that bring you back to centre.

Dr Gayle Smerdon shows how a little awareness and a few deliberate actions can change the shape of a shitty day. Once you've found your footing again, you can start to see bad days differently - as messengers, not mistakes.

You don't have to be perfect. You just need a way through.

This is your gentle guide for the days that suck, your reminder that you're still in charge of what happens next and that you are far more capable than you give yourself credit for.

To connect with Gayle ....
https://www.gaylesmerdon.com/thebaddayplaybook
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gayle-smerdon-phd-28867b34 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

It's got good morning, Dr. Gail Smith, and welcome to Yellow Shelf.

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Oh, hi, Joe. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_00 0:08

So good. Thank you for joining us. Excited to have you on this morning. Um, I read your book, and I'm someone who has crap days. Your book is available now. It is called The Bad Day Playbook. Tell us all about it.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

It certainly is. The Bad Day Playbook, What to Do When Everything Sucks. Uh, so the Bad Day Playbook's not about fixing your life, okay? It's just about it's a it's a handy little book for when you want to get through those days when everything feels just a bit too much. Because we all have them. We're very human. Um problem isn't having bad days, it's that we don't really prepare ourselves for what to do when we have them when we tend to get a little bit stuck. So when we're feeling a bit stressed or overwhelmed or emotional, we know that our brains aren't acting very well. So a lot of the advice out there at um in the self-help market tends to want to make big decisions to say, now you must change your life and be completely different. I wanted something a little bit more practical in that with our books. So I just wanted some small things to help people in the moment.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

Yeah. And you know, you and I were talking off camera. I mean, we encounter people daily who are um, you know, trying to thrive and sometimes trying to survive. Um, and you know, there's this societal expectation sometimes where we just need to soldier on and get through it. And but it's all like I always feel like I need to give myself permission if I'm having a crap day.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

Yeah, yeah. I'm um I've created uh only for myself at the moment, permission slips, and they all have little notes on the top of them. Today you have permission too, and there's about 20 of them. So uh they're part of my uh little uh bad day playbook uh verse. Yeah, but I I haven't made them publicly available yet. But uh yeah, I do have permission slips that that go with this. You're allowed to feel how you're feeling.

SPEAKER_00 2:06

Yeah, and you know, it's probably the way I was raised, you know, like soldier on, get on with it, you know, don't show your emotions. Uh but the truth is it's not actually good for us to suppress that.

SPEAKER_01 2:19

It isn't, no, you've got to feel your feels, um, and that's fine, but then you've got to do something with them. Yeah. So um when I was starting to write this book, like everyone, um, having a bad day, and I was in call the bad day position, uh, and that's me lounging on a couch, and I'm feeling stressed and upset and despondent and heavy and betrayed and all those sorts of things, and possibly verging on tears, and someone's turned gravity up because everything feels really, really heavy. So I I found myself in that position, and it was like, all right, I had a moment of awareness and said, I don't know, I don't want to stay like this, I want to do something. What can I do to make myself feel better? And I had nothing, I had absolutely nothing to help myself with. Um, despite you know, having working worked in organizational development for a long time and you know, know this stuff, but in the moment you can't help yourself. So um that's a little bit about what this book does. It's trying to identify what it is you need in the moment to stop yourself spiraling and um making a bad couple of minutes and like a bad day or a bad week.

SPEAKER_00 3:27

Yeah, and I feel like your book needs to be on the shelf in the sense that you know, okay, I I need to refer to that today.

SPEAKER_01 3:36

Yeah, it's it's a book you can read all the way through. It's got some ideas about what's good and what's not good to do in a particular time, but um it it is a good book for dipping in and out. I I hear from friends who have the book that you know they keep it on the coffee table um and when they're feeling a bit bad, then they just pick it up and have a look at what they can do. And even just that action of picking up the book, it's like okay, now I've decided that I'm gonna do something, and just that little piece of momentum can really help you on a bad day. So even just picking up the book is a good thing to do.

SPEAKER_00 4:09

Yeah. And do you want to tell us um, tell us about the decision to write the book in your journey as an author? Like, did you just write like block out time in the day? Like, what was the change? Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 4:21

Um, look, I still work full-time, um, but I have a book writing addiction. And I suppose I just have to find time where I can. It's uh I I set up blocks of time, you know, to go through, usually when I've got a big product um happening, so I've got sort of the big ideas and I've mapped it all out. I remember I think I was over one long weekend, I had, you know, hundreds of pieces of paper stuck up on the wall with all my different ideas. Because I give you a choice of four things that you might like to do on a bad day, and each of them has about 15 ideas. So I was I had them stuck up all over the world walls, and I'm going, no, that goes there, and um that's sort of the same as that. So, yeah, so I have a very strange and um big process, but the actual writing of it starts in small moments and sort of just builds, and then when I need to get into the book, um you know, really, really structuring for a book, it's when I sort of tend to have bits of paper still around the around the house for a long period of time. Yeah, yeah, and then I get it down, send it to my editor who's always very helpful. And really one really important thing with this book is I wanted it to look beautiful because no one wants a crappy looking book on a bad day. So we did a lot of work with um a lovely designer, and um we had a few failed attempts at what it might look like, and eventually we just said, What do you think? And he said, I think this, and we went, That's a really good idea. So went with what he what he suggested. Um, and yeah, just really happy. It's it's pretty, yeah, because and and it's pattable. I love patting it. I think the cover's nice.

SPEAKER_00 6:07

And the book visual is um great energy, so it's kind of what you need when you're in those moments of you know what this day is not going, you know, however, it's not going well. Um yeah, and would you mind again? Are you is there more, you know, packed away there that you would would dive into a journey as an author again?

SPEAKER_01 6:29

Oh, absolutely. I've got a like I'm looking at um a vision board, and um I have two other books which are more business books. Yes, one's around learning um and sort of taking charge of learning as part of your career, like this is your career, you need to develop yourself, I develop. And then there's another one which is really on uh managing change and focusing people on important changes in organizations, which is called Do One Thing and Do It Deep. Um, but this is my first general book for people everywhere, and I'm getting a lot of interest from uh parents who want to give this to their kids. You know, yeah, and uh friends who want to give it to other people as well when they're not having a good day in you know with a bunch of flowers and stuff. So yeah, but no, I've got I've got about eight books sitting uh in the queue, and it's yeah, finding time to write them all. And also, you know, if you want to have them well designed, it's it's having some money to to get that happening. It's it's it's a bit of a hobby, it's a bit of an expensive hobby to get them happening. Um, but we love it. Yeah, wonderful.

SPEAKER_00 7:39

Well, look, any future books, you're always welcome back here. I think your book is um needed, and I think it's um like you said, it's a wonderful gift. Your website is a great space to refer to you. Is that is that where you go?

SPEAKER_01 7:53

Because I think it's yeah, tell us about your website. Yeah, so so go to the website, it's um uh gailesmerden.com will get me. You'll find it quite easily. Yeah. Um, so there's a few ideas about different things that I do um for speaking and and occasional workshops for people, but that's where you can buy the book. Um and I'll, you know, I love to sign it and wrap it up for you and send it to you pretty quickly. Um yeah, and it's just easier and quicker to get it through me than through ordering it through um um a company.

SPEAKER_00 8:27

Another platform. I will put your website to make it easy for anyone to connect with you. They should go and check out the cover because there's lots of great energy in it and yes, free to kind of opening it up. Yeah, well done. Thanks for joining us, all the best.

SPEAKER_01 8:42

Uh, it's been heaps of fun. Thank you so much for inviting me, Jo.

SPEAKER_00 8:45

Cheers.