I found myself in deep thought over all the good that has come to me such as seeing my sister grow older, graduate from graduate school, and beginning new endeavors such as building a business. However, I find myself going back to things that were not so great such as arguing with my girlfriend, binge eating, wasting money on useless material possessions, and failing tests in school. The more I thought about these things the more grateful I became for the negative in comparison to the positive things.
Let things go.
Had the bad events such as failing an exam or being rejected from multiple jobs not occurred, I may have never been forced to discover new avenues to accomplish a goal, find new friends, and commit to a relationship. Life is full of surprises, and it is better to go along for the ride than to fight it.
When negativity strikes, I do not dwell on it for longer than five minutes because too many people are consumed with things they cannot control instead of being focused on the present moment. An example of this is anytime I finished an exam in school, everyone wanted to talk about it for a prolonged period of time after the exam. I never found this beneficial because after the exam was over there was nothing more I could do. It was out of my control.
Failures are a set-up for success.
When something negative occurs, one can either move forward or backwards but not stay in the same place. We must always remember that the world has a funny way of testing us to see if we deserve our “potential future success.”
An example of this was I applied and was rejected from tendifferent TEDx talks this past year. Once again, I could have sat there and dwelled on how life continues to be unfair. However, I cannot control why I was not accepted and because of this, I sucked it up and kept applying. All it takes is one person to say “yes” to what you desire in order to make it happen. I received that answer in November, 2016 and gave my talk in March. The best part is you should ride the momentum because I gave my second TEDx talk in May.
A big part of my life was getting into medical school which wasexceptionally challenging. When I think about it, I began doubting myself but an inspirational person I met applied for four years before receiving a single yes. With the mentality of never giving up, I applied, received interviews and got accepted!
How crazy is it that they were still trying after four years? I asked them why they still persevered and they responded, “[They] knew in their heart that they were going to be a doctor and if it wasn’t for all the rejections, they would not be half of the person they are today.”
“Before a dream is realized, the soul of the world tests everything that was learned along the way.” — Paulo Coelho
There is beauty in everything from a roll of sushi to a tree. Everything took time to create and experienced many setbacks in the process. Making sushi is an art and the person behind the roll had to go through trial and error many different times to perfect the exquisite roll.
If a tree had not endured an intense hurricane when it was a baby, perhaps it would have not grown to be a sturdy adult. Let us remember that from the bad moments there is always good as long as we look for it and continue to move forward and never backwards.
“I realize there’s something incredibly honest about trees in winter, how they’re experts at lettings things go.” — Jeffrey McDaniel
What are some thing you all are grateful for?
Originally published at medium.com