The Good and The Bad

We tend to take a lot from our great experiences. We treasure them, remember them, and credit them for being major reasons we became the people we are today. These good times will continue to shape us throughout our lives. In fact it is easy to acknowledge the growth, change, and learning curve that comes from good experiences. It is much harder to acknowledge that the same can happen from our bad experiences.

When we experience negative situations we generally try to push them from our minds and forget they ever happened. Maybe we struggled through and eating disorder and don't want to remember the pain we went through in the process. Maybe we struggled with coming out to our family and want to forget all the people who abandoned us when we needed them most. Maybe we are simply in a place where we are unhappy and if we question if we are truly suppose to be where we are. Regardless of the situation, we need to take a moment to think about where our growth, change, and learning actually comes from. 

I learned today that we dwell on the things we learn through our positive experiences because we fail to see how our negative experiences are helping us grow as well. Think about a time when you struggled with something and fought your way through to emerge at the other end. Now think about how much you learned about yourself throughout the process. You see, we forget that learning what we like, what makes us happy, and what makes us successful isn't the only learning we do. We also need to learn what we don't like, what makes us unhappy, and what make us fail. It may not be pretty and it may not be easy, but it makes our life balanced. If we never knew what we disliked, what made us unhappy, or what made us fail. would we ever really know what made us happy or successful?

It is a balance of the good and the bad that keep us growing, changing, and succeeding. Sometimes we just fail to acknowledge that the times we struggled the most where actually the times we learned the most as well.

From now on, we will embrace the good and the bad in order to learn who we truly are.