Bad days are an inherent part of life which everybody has and there is nothing we can do about it. But did you ever have a day so bad that the mere thought of it instantly triggers a raft of negative emotions? I know I did. In fact, there was this one event I used to link a mixture of negative emotions to.
On this particular day, I learned that the cancer with which my mother had been diagnosed months before got the better of her. I can still vividly remember the naive thoughts that I had when she was first diagnosed. ‘’There’s no way she’s going to die like that. I know she’ll get through it.’’
Of course, I can also vividly remember how much I cried when I was informed of her death – and when I had to tell my sister about it. This alone would probably have been by itself the most painful experience of my life – but it didn’t end there.
If that wasn’t already enough, I had to face a very challenging problem that changed me forever – the vultures of the family started to creep in and threw me a curve ball by trying to illegitimately get a share of the inheritance which set off a huge fight within the family.
Here I was, doing my best not only to deal with the grief and fill the void that my mother’s passing had created, but also to keep this incident from tearing the family apart. Although I couldn’t see it in the moment, I later realized that this day was in fact a blessing and turned out to be the best day of my life.
Does it mean that thinking about it makes me happy? Hell no. Turning the worst day of your life into the best day of your life isn’t about being happy about what happened – because that would be near to impossible. Instead, it means making it meaningful so that it serves a deeper purpose.
Let’s talk about 3 reasons why the worst day of your life is the best day of your life.
1. It Forces You To Grow
The primary reason why I consider this particular day – which was horrible to experience – to be the best day of my life is because it forced me to grow and evolve. I can’t imagine the kind of person I would have turned out to be if I didn’t go through this pain – I don’t want to, because I’m proud of the progress I’ve made since then.
Regardless of how painful and difficult it was for you to go through this event – it made you a better person in some way. It either made you stronger, more resilient, wiser, or it could even have taught you a powerful lesson that you would have never learned without facing this challenge!
These tough times are blessings in disguise because they have tremendous value embedded within them which you can decide to extract at any moment. Believe me when I say that I wasn’t particularly motivated and eager to find the good in my mother’s passing when it happened, but as it turns out, this day was a blessing. If you hadn’t gone through this painful experience, you wouldn’t be half the person you are today.
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
2. It Wakes You Up
People who have gone through some near-death experiences should know this best. Such events usually wake you up and are great reminders of what really matters in life. More often than not, these tough times make us reevaluate our life values and go down a totally different path. What did you realize this particular day that changed the direction of your life? One incident can literally change everything.
CAVEAT: I’m always very cautious when I talk about this because it’s very easy to come up with a disempowering meaning.
For instance, let’s pretend that the worst day of your life was when your ex-boyfriend or girlfriend cheated on you and broke your heart. A disempowering and limiting belief would be to say that you’ve woken up to the fact that men cannot be trusted.
Once you’ve found a meaning to give the situation, make sure to ask yourself this question in order to determine if the label you’re giving this experience is empowering you or disempowering: ‘’Does this meaning improve my life or limit it?’’
3. It Motivates You
There is one indisputable fact about human beings: we will always do our very best to avoid pain and gain pleasure. This is one of the reasons that explains why so many people have a hard time breaking free from their comfort zone.
When you go through an intensely painful experience, it automatically fuels you to take some kind of action in order to get rid of the pain. It doesn’t mean that you were driven to do the right things, though. Some people get motivated to do drugs, which is one of the worst ways to deal with pain.
Once again, make sure that you use this experience as fuel to get you to take action on things that will serve your life, and not as an excuse to temporarily get rid of the pain or escaping it using dubious ways.
“Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.” – Arnold Schwarzenegger
In my case, pain drove me to work harder on my business to be able to change my toxic environment which I successfully did. If I hadn’t gone through this much pain, I’d probably have stayed in my toxic yet pleasurable comfort zone.
The worst times of your life have the power to create a better life for yourself if you’re willing to learn from it. Believe me when I say that I wasn’t motivated to turn this horrible day into the best day of my life when this happened. But through time and thinking I was able to find a deeper meaning and enhance my life because of it.
