One of the founders and writers of Ikigaid follows our blog and asked if I could write a feature on attitude. They specifically wanted to hear about my philosophy that bad days don't exist.
I pondered it for a few days and then wrote the following article. It was fun to really dig in deep and discover why I don't believe in bad days. I hope that it helps others discover the beauty in their lives--even amidst the rocky ride.
Click the link to read the article on Ikigaid:
The link above is no longer working, so here is the text:
Life Bites Sometimes…So Attitude is Everything
Bad days don’t exist.
Yes, you read that correctly—I don’t believe in bad days.
Nor do I believe in bad months or years for that matter. Don’t get me wrong, I
agree that life does bite sometimes. There are moments when all want to sit on
the beach and soak up the sun, yet we are stuck in deep water, treading with
all our might, and just when we feel we can swim ourselves up to the surface
another waves comes crashing in.
It was years ago that I stopped believing
in bad days. There are challenges, heartbreaks, trials and disappointments, our
‘waves’ of life if you will, that we face along our journey of life. However,
they are not the entire day; they are
only portions or moments of the day. Before, and after, those moments we experience times of mercy, love and joy. It
is our attitude that transforms our perspective.
A former president, Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, stated the same sentiment as he rallied the United States through
the Great Depression when he said, ‘things are not so good, but every cloud has
silver lining.’ These experiences of hardship, with the right attitude, become
the defining moments of our lives. Will we give up and drown with the next
wave? Or do we dig deep within ourselves and find the energy the keep kicking?
Before you stop reading and tell
me, like someone told me twelve years ago, that I am naïve to not believe in
bad days, let me give some examples. Just think about a day, or experience,
that you would label as “bad,” “horrible,” or find yourself saying “why did
that happen to me?” Have you thought of one? They are usually memories that are
seared into your mind and still give you cold sweats when you recall them.
These could be getting a speeding
ticket making your late schedule even worse, someone you love dying, spilling a drink on your suit before an
important meeting, breaking up or getting divorced, losing your job, an
accident or injury, or it could be as simple as snoring in public or finding
out you had toilet paper stuck on your shoe for the last hour.
While you are thinking I will tell
you some of mine. First, a simple one: Growing up, baseball was the family
sport. We all played. My uncle was my coach from the time I started Little
League until the time I graduated high school. He knew my weaknesses and
strengths on the field. One of my strengths my entire life was bunting. I could
lay down a bunt on a baseline just in time to win a game. My senior year we
were playing in the State finals. This was it. As a senior I wouldn’t get
another chance to play in this tournament again. We were losing by one and had
two men on base. It was my turn at the plate and my uncle gave me the signs. I
went to the plate and to my horror I struck out! Later, my uncle yelled in frustration
that I had missed his sign for me to bunt. The game was lost because I made a
mistake.
Another example was at the age of
ten I amputated all my fingers in a farm accident on my right hand. For the
rest of my life I will live with a handicap. Some more personal and emotional
experiences include saying goodbye to six of our seven children in their
infancy and both my wife, Lady Hiva and I have one sibling that died by
suicide.
As you can see, I am no stranger to
heartache. And I don’t want to diminish that fact that we have things happen
that we cannot control. However, we have our choice on how to handle the trial.
We can become embittered, hateful, depressed and angry by focusing only on the
“bad.” Doing this only blinds us to all the positive that happens as well. It
also poisons our ability to function. All we want to do is give up.
We need to step back, refocus and
reevaluate. There is a silver lining, we just need to see it. In my baseball
example losing the last game of my high school career, letting my team down, or
making a mistake could be that poison
that blinds me to the fact that during my ten years of playing baseball with my
uncle I learned how to push through hard times until the very end and how to
win, and lose, gracefully.
Although an accident left me with
fingers that are a handicap, I have learned to improvise and find new ways to
do traditional parts of life. A physical handicap doesn’t have to be
debilitating. Losing a child is one of most devastating experiences any person
can have. Any parent that has buried their child can attest to this. The days
we said goodbye to our children would be as close as I have ever come to
titling a day as a bad day. Yet, each time we also were filled with love.
The day after the funeral for our
son, Vaitafe, we received the call that my younger brother, Trevor, died by
suicide. Sadness became devastation. This was a defining moment. We could give
in and drown in the desolation or we could keep swimming. We had to get my
parents back home and when we told the airline agent our situation she put them
on the next flight at no extra charge. If that wasn’t enough to convince there
is a silver lining, we had a phone call when we arrived home that some friends,
who had known what that Lady Hiva and I
had just experienced with our son, and bought plane tickets for us to join our
family at Trevor’s funeral. If we were bitter and angry we would have missed
the positive moments that surround us.
Years later, we found out that the
son we adopted had to be given back because the birth mother changed her mind.
Again, we were heart broken. Minutes after the social worker took him we were
wallowing in tears and a dear friend came to our home and cried with us. He
didn’t just call. He didn’t just send a note.
He came to hug us when we needed it
most.
The last story I will tell is when
Lady Hiva’s brother died of suicide last year. We had just spent a week with
him. We were on our way back home, half way around the world, and we were
kicked off a plane that was “overbooked.” That could have been one of those bad
moments. We were missing work and stuck in a city with nothing but our carry-on
luggage. Then as we called our family to tell them, Lady Hiva’s brother told us
what happened. Had we been on that flight, we would have been on the other side
of the world when we found out and not able it to make it to family for days.
Examples could go on and on. We all
have a quiver of battle stories we could share. BUT…We also have a stock of
positive experiences, we just need to refocus our bitter blindness and detox
that shattering poison so we recognize them.
Earlier I asked you all to think of a day you used to call a ‘bad day.’
My challenge now is to look back and see where that day was also positive.
Where did you feel loved? Peace?
Did someone show they cared for
you? Where is the silver lining?
I am inviting you
stop believing in bad days too.
It takes work. We know it is easier
to be blinded by the bad. But a change of attitude is liberating. It is that
fresh air we have desperately been seeking as we kick against the waves. It is
usually enough to keep us afloat. Every day is a gift.
Dustin Bradshaw is a motivational speaker and the author of
WHITE LILIES IN AUTUMN (link:
www.dustinbradshaw.com) You can follow him by reading the
book or following him on the blog HERE
AND THERE (link: www.dtbradshaw.blogspot.com).
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