There are days we wake up and our day is already off to a bad start. We can wake up irritated, sad, angry, lonely. Sometimes we know just what circumstance caused this, other times we can’t find any evidence of why we feel this way, it could be simply our bodies, hormones, biorhythms, lack of a good night’s sleep. Nevertheless, waking up feeling anger and resentment is not a great way to start your day. Here are five ways you can begin to move out of these disturbing feelings:

1. See if you are out of integrity somewhere, that there was something you did or didn’t follow through on that is nagging you. This information is stored in your core -your gut. You can feel when you are out of alignment with your beliefs and behaviors. If you find the place where you are in fact out of integrity which is generating these negative emotions, then plan a course of action to address this. For instance, if this has to do with a relationship, maybe you need to make a sincere apology if you let someone down, or were brisk or rude, and apologizing starts the cleanup and is your fast track to feeling better again.

2. If you broke an agreement with yourself, such as you were really, really going on your diet yesterday but ate two bowls of ice cream after dinner, this could be disturbing as you feel shame and anger at yourself. At this point, you simply acknowledge that this is familiar and “here I am again.” And, then move on to recommit to your diet. Staying guilty or verbally beating yourself up does nothing to move you out of resentment or anger. Moving on in a new positive direction with positive self-talk puts you back on the right path.

3. Writing down 10 things (or more) you are grateful for and then close your eyes and think of each one separately until you have a smile on your face. Re-aligning what is most important to us can overcome the anger and resentment we can get stuck in.

4. And finally, find your choice point. “How did I do this to me?” We all make choices all day long in our lives. Choices in our relationships, whether to have children, to buy a house, to have pets, to run a marathon, to take a new position at work. And, when we make those choices we must accept ALL the consequences that come from those choices, positive and negative. When we wake up angry or resentful that our partner isn’t paying enough attention to us, our children keep waking us up at night, our home is out of order and there is a ton of laundry to do, training for the marathon is exhausting, and your new boss at work is awful, you must remind yourself that you did this to you. These results were from your choices. And when you find your choice point, you can take accountability and even get the joke of it, that you are blaming everyone around you for the choices you made. When you find your choice points ask yourself if you had it to do over again would you choose differently? Do you need to change course now? Is it possible? Or do you move out of the victim powerless position of blame, being angry and resentful by realizing this is your life, you made the choices and now it is time to own that and find the good your day has to offer.