Negative experiences lead to your greatness.
What if you were to take a moment and thank the people in your life that have upset you?
Hold on, I can hear you screaming (uh, saying) “What? Are you crazy, why would I want to do that?”
My question to you is why wouldn’t you want to thank someone who perhaps challenged or pushed you outside your comfort zone?
In your life you probably have many people who have supported or challenged you in a positive way.
And you probably have some that have pushed you in ways that you might not have felt or feel were/are positive.
All of your negative experiences have helped you to become the person you are today.
True, there are many people we are happy to have in our lives, and there are those we never want to see again.
And the truth is that every single one of those people should be thanked. You are who you are because of them.
Yes, even those you don’t ever care to see again. Think of a past experience that you have negative thoughts or feelings around.
Now, look at the present, what did you learn from that experience? Was it to not be pushed around so you drew some boundaries? Did you see how it shaped a new empowering behavior? What was it that you got from that experience.
You are who you are because of all your experiences positive and negative. Learning from the positive doesn’t always give you the magic to boldly step into who you are meant to be.
Recognize that negative experiences help you grow as a person. Negative experiences actually become positive ones when you learn from them.
Learning from your negative experiences.
In junior high I had a typing teacher, Mrs. Caldwell. She was tough and demanded a lot. I did not like her one bit at first.
Well, do you know what? In the end (three years), she was one of my favorite teachers. And I realized how much I learned from her.
This was important since my first career was a legal secretary. And my equipment to work on was an electronic memory typewriter!
Because of Mrs. Caldwell, I excelled in typing and in life. Fast forward to 2019 and all we do is type! Because of her I was able to type 120 wpm (words per minute).
Had I not realized how that initial negative experience helped me become who I am today, I might never have become a legal secretary which lead me to working with the executive coach which lead me to becoming a coach.
How to learn from your negative experiences.
One of my clients was finding she couldn’t get out of overwhelm with all she had on her plate.
She wanted to know why when she cleaned and organized her office it was almost exactly in the same state two weeks later, which was a mess.
During one coaching session she burst into tears. She said she was a mess and so was everything else around her. In corporate she had a boss who told her a neat desk was the sign of someone who didn’t have enough to do.
Interestingly, she did not much like said boss and felt a lot of animosity toward him before this comment. You can imagine how she felt after it.
Huh? At the time, she had taken great pride in keeping her work space (and home) neat and optimally set up for her to work efficiently.
Ask yourself, what negative experience am I currently holding onto that, if I recognized what I learned from it would enable me to reach the successes I want.
And from now on, when you have an experience that feels negative to you, ask yourself immediately “what can I learn from this?”
Do you need to clear some clutter, physical or mental? Would you like help getting clear on how you can use your negative experiences to your advantage? If yes, schedule a free Design Your Success with Purpose free session with me. Schedule your free 30 minute session now. You’ll walk away with at least one (if not more) things that you can start doing now will lead you to create exceptional success in your life.
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