Q&A for How to Have a Good Day at Work

Ask yourself 3 questions: "What did I learn?" "What did I initiate?" and "Who did I help?" Feel free to reflect on those questions at the end of the day, or mull over them at the beginning of the day.

Create a goal that revolves around your values. For instance, if growth is important to you, you can start off your goal with "Today I will have prioritized growth by..." Then, you can take a look at each day in your calendar and ask yourself "What meetings do I have? What projects will I be working on? How can I really build growth into the day that I have ahead of me?"

Get in the habit of reflecting on your day—you can do this on a daily or weekly basis. Think about what days felt the best to you and why. As you reflect more and more, you can be really intentional about adding in those good, positive elements to your future workday.

Once you recognize that you've become overly emotional, take a deep slow breath, exhale slowly. Concentrate on the physical sensation of your breath. Then count slowly to ten .(Count in your head if counting out loud would cause problems.) Concentrate on the numbers and your breathing as you do it, using deep, slow, even breaths. Always get sufficient sleep -- if you aren't managing that, you emotions will be a lot harder to control and will veer toward negative expression when pressured. Eat healthily and get plenty of exercise as well.

You might never know for sure, and that's okay. If you feel like you're being annoying, try to keep your conversations work-related, and only talk to your colleague if you absolutely need to. If they aren't annoyed by you, they'll most likely come up to you and start a conversation at some point.