IT'S been one of those weeks. I am sure most of you will know the kind of thing I am referring to when I say that.

Sometimes it just feels as though everything you try to do turns to mush. In using that word I am being polite. In addition to some upsetting news within our family, every little niggly thing that could possibly go wrong has done so. Of course it hasn’t, but that’s how it has been feeling recently.

Yesterday morning I had three hours put aside to catch up with some work emails only to discover that a glitch in the system meant nothing was sending. I tried to get around the problem in every way I could think of but nothing worked.

Frustrated, I thought I would use the time to sort out some other annoying little bits of admin. Instead I found myself being asked for passwords at every turn which of course I had forgotten. I ended up more frustrated than ever.

I spent the best part of what should have been a useful catch up morning going round and round in circles. We have all had days like these. It can be easy to feel as though nothing you do is making any progress and that your whole day has been wasted.

When you then go to the supermarket to find that you can’t find tomatoes for your salad this will start to add to your feeling that ‘everything is going wrong’.

Once you start feeling like this it can also feed into feelings of low self-worth or inadequacy which for some people can become hard to shift. One little antidote to this feeling which I have found useful is to keep notes of little achievements in a notebook.

We know that our brains tend to focus on the things that have gone wrong much more than the things that are going right. It is the same with our own achievements.

If 10 people tell you that you have done well at something and one person criticises you – it is most likely the criticism that you will find yourself dwelling on.

If your day feels as though it is ‘going wrong’ – then it is easy to feel as though we have achieved nothing useful at all when actually this is very rarely the case.

At the end of every day – try writing a list of all the things you have managed to do in the day. It doesn’t matter if these would sound insignificant to someone else – your list is only for you – not them. The important thing is to start giving yourself credit for everything that you manage to do despite the challenges we face from time to time.

We are unlikely to celebrate small things like cooking a meal for the family, getting in groceries from the supermarket (extra bonus if you have found tomatoes!), helping a child with homework, paying a bill, dealing with a piece of admin, having some exercise, sending off an email etc – but they are achievements nonetheless.

We all achieve small wins such as these every day. Taking the time to reflect on the little things that we have accomplished can be a good way to boost our confidence and remind ourselves that we are all doing our best and still managing to get things done.

Not every day will run as smoothly as we would like but then again some days will. And in the meantime let’s celebrate even the smallest of wins and remind ourselves that we will get there in the end!