We’ve all had them. The days you hit the snooze button and wish you could forget about getting up. The days you think about the problems and obnoxious people waiting for you at work and figure you’d rather have typhoid fever. The days it feels like nothing good will happen so its best to stay out of harm’s way by staying home.

Mama said there’d be days like this! If your mama never got around to warning you about them, there’s a song by the Shirelles that lets you know she should have. And if you, mama, haven’t said to your kids they can expect days like this, it’s time you did.

Difficult days are a part of everyone’s life. Difficult people at work are, too. Some things you can count on, whether you’d like to or not.

What you need to know whether mama said it or not about dealing with days like this is that the key to maintaining a strong and happy perspective on them starts with you. Your attitude, focus and determination will get you through days like this.

So what is the attitude? I’d recommend acceptance and curiosity. When you accept that these days are going to be challenging, maybe supremely annoying, you give yourself permission not to respond. It’s like waking up to a big snowfall after Spring has officially arrived. You can’t do anything about it, but you don’t need to invest a lot of emotional energy in dealing with it either.

Curiosity is a little trickier. When you’re ticked off, it’s hard to conjure up curiosity. But if you can figuratively scratch your head and wonder what might come of a potential cat fight if you could change your interaction with a testy co-worker, the outcome might make your day. That’s one example. Another might be anticipating a challenging question in a meeting and being curious about the question rather than defensive about the challenge.

Focus is about knowing what you want to achieve or experience during the course of the day. When you start out with a picture of what you want to happen in your mind, you’ll be more likely to experience it or something close to it rather than if you started the day with a blank slate and a crabby attitude.

We all have an enormous amount of noise and distraction to deal with day to day. When you can focus on what is important to you in achieving the day’s goals and your longer term objectives, you get better at tuning out the noise and ignoring the distractions.

Determination is probably the most difficult quality to muster when you’re feeling like you’d rather stay home on the porch than head out into a confrontational world. In order to feel determined, you must have a positive goal in mind; one that makes you feel strong and proud of yourself as you imagine attaining it. The picture of a successful you and the good feelings you have because of it are what drive determination.

Determination is dependent on focus. If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there. Any time frame will too. And any outcome is potentially o.k.

When mama said there’d be days like this, she was thinking of exceptions to your motivated and excited journey into the future. Consider difficult days to be just that. Exceptions. With the proper mind set, they can be valuable reality checks. They offer opportunities to stop for a moment to think about where you are going, why you want to go there and what you are choosing along the way.

Days like this are gifts! Embrace their questions and listen carefully to your answers. Days like this lead to days of purposeful action, which reward us with satisfaction and joy. Mama said there’d be days like this, but she may have forgotten to tell you how lucky you are to have them.