Many of us have had bad things happen to us. Such is life – with the highs are also come lows.

Maybe you lost a loved one, experienced the dissolution of a relationship, a financial hardship or lost a job. Maybe a combination of these things happened at once. 

These kinds of events can have a lasting negative impact on your life. You can wallow in the bad things that happen to you or use them to help you become a stronger, better version of yourself, because life-altering events of any kind can be incredibly powerful in helping you grow both personally and professionally.

They can also help weed out the people from your life who aren’t supposed to be there. You’ll find out who are your true friends and supporters during a crisis. 

After going through a tough time in my own life someone wise said to me, “Stef, you can’t control what people do and how they feel, and you don’t have to like it. It just is what it is.” These words hit home for me. The idea of realizing that you have to let go and some things just cannot be fixed.

Someone else said to me, “Everyone’s life has peaks and valleys. If I dwell on all the bad things that have happened to me, I could fall into a depression. Instead, I accept the fact that life WILL have up and downs, and all each of us can do is keep moving forward toward the next UP. Because no matter how bleak things are, they will get better.”

Every day presents a new opportunity to be a better version if yourself. Remind yourself that some things are just not meant to work out and embrace the idea of “it’s okay to not be okay.” Trust that the universe has better things in store for you.