Challenge as a Catalyst for Change: 3 Crappy Experiences that Made My Life Better

Is it possible to make significant change without having experienced difficult circumstances? Absolutely. But, as most of us know from our own experiences, we tend to not shake things up too much when things are going ‘okay.’

We may not love everything about our lives, but things aren’t so bad that we feel a strong desire to act. That fire just isn’t there, and we kind of just plod along.

Have you ever noticed the most inspiring people, the people who have done the most amazing things in life, seem to share a common thread of overcoming some sort of adversity? Many times, it is things so horrible we can’t imagine how they were able to move past these situations and create the life they did.

The life I have now is nothing I would have imagined I would have many years ago. Like anyone, there were things I didn’t like; I had certain things I wanted, but didn’t give any serious thought to actually trying to bring them into my experience. I kind of had that ‘wouldn’t it be nice’ mentality, but never really thought it was possible to do more than I had been doing.

But, as my interest in personal development deepened, I actually made conscious effort to be different and change my life, and things certainly progressed. But, when looking back on everything that has happened, the biggest catalysts without a shadow of a doubt, were the ‘bad’ times. Would I have ended up in the same place had these things not happened? I suppose, but I’ll never know.

What I do know is, we don’t have to let our troubles consume us, and dictate the course of our lives. They provide us with amazing opportunities to create something better than we ever thought we could.

We just have to make the firm decision that this will be so, that we will not let these problems bring us down a self-destructive path, or lead us further away from who we want to be and what we want.

We have to be willing to take personal responsibility for our lives, and acknowledge we have a choice on how to proceed. We must commit to being better, and make that worthy mission a priority.

It doesn’t mean we can never have our moments of feeling panic , self-pity, fear, doubt, sadness, a sense of unfairness or ‘why me.’ We are only human after all. What it does mean , however, is we must be willing to work through these feelings, and keep them from overwhelming us. We must be willing to see how they can serve us, and be used as a springboard into something better.

My Father Dying

I remember shortly after returning from a stint teaching English in Japan, I was ready for a different life. I got a standard office job when I returned to the US, but by the second month, the travel wheels were already turning. I met Ryan around that time, and that totally changed my whole world.

I quit that job after a few months, and took a two-month trip around Europe. I saw that as the first chapter of my new life. I returned home ready to conquer the world , even though I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do. But, I felt good, and I knew this was the start of something.

A couple of days after I got home, my father told me he had been diagnosed with lung cancer—he made it sound like it was just this one little tumor in his lung, and I didn’t learn the truth until I went with him to his first chemotherapy session.

I mentioned something to the doctor about surgery, and he noted surgery wasn’t an option for stage 4 lung cancer. While I had been devastated upon hearing the news from my father, hearing this was like being punched in the stomach with an anvil—not only did he have cancer, he had terminal cancer.

Within eight months, he was gone, and that period was one of the worst of my life. Everyday I was riddled with anxiety and fear; sometimes I would cry so hard I couldn’t breathe, and I was essentially having panic attacks.

When he finally died, there was this odd sense of peace—there was no more uncertainty about what was going to happen, and the pain that came from watching him suffer was now gone.

I experienced one of the things we fear most in this world, and I had made it through. The grief was not intense at first, but it gained momentum. I still couldn’t believe all that had happened, and I slowly started processing everything.

Getting such devastating news when I was so ready for ‘greatness’ made it all the harder to deal with. The life I thought I would create for myself would never be—I had this idea of becoming this perfect person with this perfect existence and this could never happen now that I had been touched by such a horrible thing. That was a hard pill to swallow.

But, as horrible as this time was, it was also a time of tremendous growth. One of the most important things we need to do to make our lives truly better is face all of our ‘shit.’ And, we go to great lengths to avoid doing this; it just festers and affects us in countless ways.

But, the grief I felt in this situation forced me into this dark hole where all the other ‘stuff’ was lurking,  and it just came rushing through the floodgates. Rather than flee, I stuck around, and I’m glad I did.

It was extremely uncomfortable, but as time went on, I felt lighter—by no means did I totally release everything, but something within changed dramatically. For the first time in my life, I gave serious thought to what I wanted and who I wanted to be. For the first time in my life, I decided to take specific action, rather than just being a spectator of my own life.

Losing My Income Suddenly

My first freelance job I landed provided me with such steady work I never really thought about getting any more clients. Then one day, there were major changes at the company and all that work dried up almost instantly.

Never having been good with money, I didn’t have any savings to speak of, like literally zero dollars. At the time, I was traveling in areas with a low cost of living, and I didn’t feel particularly motivated to work more beyond what would cover expenses, so my ‘cushion’ was pretty threadbare.

I should have went home and got a job you say? Oh no…I wasn’t about to give up that easily, and so began my journey of living off credit cards, and upping my personal development work like a thousand notches.

My study of LOA in particular took quite the intense turn. Kept what was in my account to make my minimum payments so I wouldn’t lose my precious cards, and that was the start of one of the most challenging, but beneficial, periods of my life.

At this point, I had two choices. Really work on myself, and develop a mindset that would help me through this situation, or be consumed with sheer terror and panic every waking moment.

While the latter did rear its head on occasion, most of the time I was working on feeling good, and seeing what came to me after I made this transformation, I’m sure glad I chose the former.

This course of action was really hard for my logical mind to accept, and it kept telling me all sorts of annoying things , like I was being ‘irresponsible,’ that this LOA stuff was a bunch of hooey, that I needed to ‘get real’ and head back to NJ, at least for now, and get a job.

But, I did more meditating; I got a lot of practice choosing perspective, and exercising gratitude. Instead of feeling badly about using cash advances to pay rent, I felt grateful I had a home. Instead of feeling like a loser for charging all my groceries, I gave thanks for having good food to eat. I realized racking up some credit card debt wasn’t the worst thing there was in the world, and I would pay it back–which I did shortly after I started working again.

I stuck it out, and I ended up finding–all in the same week— three awesome clients with plenty of well-paying jobs for me.I was making more money than I ever had in my whole life, and it only required a few hours of my day.

I have no doubt this situation would have not turned out as well had I taken the path that was considered ‘responsible,’ or if I had given into my fear. I made major shifts during that time, shifts that continue to make a positive impact on my life.

The main lessons I would like to impart in relaying this experience is the amazing power we have to shape our reality, the importance of ignoring outside circumstances, and the hidden blessings that come with situations where things get so bad you can no longer proceed as you were, and are forced into change.

Just focus on what you want, and if you do the mental work, things will line up for you in ways you can’t imagine. Have a little faith. Listen to your instinct, and don’t worry so much about what other people might do, or what is considered ‘right’ or ‘appropriate’ as dictated by something outside yourself, whether your family or society at large.

Battling Feelings of Depression

While I definitely don’t suffer from full-blown bouts of depression that leave me in bed for days, totally hopeless about life, and unable to find zero joy in the human experience, I definitely have had periods where I have felt depressed—moments of malaise if you will. I have always felt emotion very intensely, and as they say, it is a blessing and a curse.

I remember having these experiences as far back as high school. While most of the time I am ‘normal’ and feel happy, it can surface from time to time. Sometimes there is a trigger and sometimes there isn’t.

I look at people who seem to be naturally upbeat and I wonder what it would be like to be them. As I have gotten deeper into my personal development work, I have definitely made improvements, but this is certainly an issue that has yet to go away. Maybe one day it will totally, or maybe it will be one of the more challenging aspects that I will have to contend with—only the future will tell.

But, in many ways, these moments have been an incredible gift. At the time, they certainly suck, but have given me good practice in releasing resistance to bad feelings, which just makes us feel that much worse. When we can just accept feeling badly, the intensity of the whole situation reduces. I know this funk will pass, and that lightens the load a bit.

These moments really put me deeply into introspection-mode, and I have made some of my most profound realizations during these times. I almost always come out on the other side of these moments, even if they just last an hour or two, with some helpful nugget of wisdom.

If we are up for the task, our bad emotional times can really teach us a lot, and give us amazing insights that allow us to make significant improvements in our lives. We realize we can be generally happy people without feeling happy every moment.

Had these experiences not been woven into my existence, maybe I never would have made all the great changes I have made in my life—if everything was ‘just fine,’ I may have never felt compelled to search more deeply.

Sure, we naturally have a preference for the good, and would rather avoid the ‘bad’; but the unpleasant things that are bound to occur in one form or another can set the stage for an even better life than we have now, if we are willing to adopt that perspective, and look to see how a specific experience could play this role.

All of the most awesome ‘stuff’ I managed to bring into my experience was preceded by the not-so-awesome, and I am sure many people would relay a similar experience. Use the challenges in your life to propel you forward, not hold you back.