Be aware, I am about to share something with you that you probably wouldn’t expect a ‘Motivational Speaker’ to say, but guess what? I am not here to share false information just because it is positive; I will allow others to do that. I pride myself on sharing the truth, with information that can help and provide value for individuals looking to change and become better.
Okay back to the post; if you haven’t experienced this already then wow, you are lucky, because it is no secret that…
Bad Things Happen!
Unavoidable issues arise, emergencies emerge and that one thing we are terrified of happening becomes a reality.
We can’t control this, we all get hit with the bad luck stick from time to time. However one thing we can control is how we react to the circumstances. People tend to react in two ways.
1) The bad thing happens, you feel destroyed and decide to continuously use it against yourself, resulting in suffering for a long period of time.
I experienced this on a couple of occasions throughout my life. When I was really young, in year 7, my mother kicked me out because of the relationship I had with my father. To be fair, the pain and grief she put me through at such a young age is still the reason we haven’t had a relationship in over 13 years. But I suffered for a long time; the majority of my teenage years were lived with a shadow of those thoughts passing through my head on a regular basis.
2) The bad thing happens; you accept it and continue to progress and move forward with your life.
This is the approach I try to take now. Anything that happens I try to learn from, using the experience to help spend more time fighting back, instead of playing a victim.
However I don’t want you to confuse my message, I’m not saying when we go through a hard time we can’t spend time grieving. We all need time to recover from heartbreak or a horrible shock, but I just don’t want people to waste years of their lives because of it, constantly holding themselves back and stumping any opportunity of moving forward. That is what I did and maybe I would have achieved more than just 4 GCSEs if I hadn’t just played the victim.
Through my experience of working within many schools around the country, option 1 appears to be common amongst the individuals I work with. That is why I spend a lot of time working on resilience, helping them discover the strengths and benefits from a certain situation and devising a plan to move forward.
I have now presented you with the two options, and I hope you realize we can’t help what happens to us but we can do something about how we decide to react. Do we continue to suffer? Or do we accept the challenges ahead of us, and do everything we can to keep moving forward?
Use all the negative emotions and experiences as fuel, and convert that energy into something constructive. Stop suffering and start striving… your story is who you are and many benefits can be taken away from that!
