Bad things happen. People can disappoint you. Some days, everything’s awful and you wish you could go back to bed and have a do-over—or run away from it all. For those moments, there’s one mantra to try: “It’s like this now.”

Wait, what?!

That doesn’t mean accepting your fate and Eeyore-ing your way through the rest of the day. It’s acknowledging that things have changed—perhaps for the worse for you—and using that as a starting place to figure out where you can go from there. (Hint: it’s only up!) Sarah Larson Levy, co-founder of the trendy Y7 Studio in New York City, shared this insight with Bumble magazine, explaining how it’s been a gamechanger as she built her yoga business from one studio to 11 nationwide—and has helped her deal with life’s lows in general.

“As a founder, you only hear the problems—no one ever comes to you and says, ‘You’re doing great!’” she told the mag. “I got really stuck in that space around three or four years in.”

It’s easy to get stuck in the complaining and worrying cycle, where you complain about what’s happening, worry about the future, then get so annoyed you go right back to complaining, without ever making forward progress. Acknowledging that hey, this sucks, but it’s where I am right now can help you break out of that endless loop of negativity and start thinking, “well, if this is how things are, what would make them better?” Your knee-jerk reaction may be “nothing”—at least, mine has been lately—but when that bubbles up, repeat the mantra. Is there a micro-change that could be made? And another? It may seem too small to matter, but those alterations add up. Slowly, but surely.

Lead photo by Andre Hunter on Unsplash