Something Bad Is Sometimes What It Takes to Improve Your Life
The Universe is a paradox. Hence, sometimes something bad can turn out to be good.
My life was forever changed 22 years ago.
On November 30th, 1999, I decided to walk the quarter-mile or so from my apartment to the post office. When crossing the busy highway between home and my destination, I was struck by a car (and it was a hit-and-run incident).
Fortunately, I have zero memory of the accident itself. For the next week or so, there are one or two hazy, heavily sedated memories. But then my sedation was reduced, and I found myself in a hospital bed with my right leg in traction and my right arm not working.
I would learn that my right tibia (the big bone between the knee and ankle) had been shattered, and my fibula (the thin bone between the knee and ankle) fractured in 2 places. Also, my right brachial plexus (the nerve cluster in the shoulder just below the collar bone) had been stretched – which was why my right arm wasn’t working.
Later, I learned my right clavicle (collarbone) had been shattered. (Funny story – they originally told me it was fractured. Due to it being shattered, they put three titanium plates around it to take pressure off my damaged brachial plexus nerves. This was funny because the discovery of this came a good month plus later when I saw the plates in an x-ray).
While I have shared a mostly humorous narrative about what happened in my book The Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins with a Trip to the Post Office – the experience had a much more profound impact on my life.
Bad things can destroy you or rebuild you
My recovery was nothing but unknowns. They expected me to walk again – but estimated it could take from 1-3 years. The nerve damage in my arm was expected to mostly heal – but how long, and how completely, they had no clue.
I had truly incredible doctors, occupational and physical therapists, as well as nurses who worked on me and my healing. But I also had steadfast determination and laser-precise focus on my recovery.
This was the first time I truly embraced the power of conscious reality creation. I gave it everything I had, my total and complete hyper-focus, and saw nothing but complete recovery and total healing. My therapists loved me because they could beat the ever-loving snot out of me – and then I asked for more.
Following a bone graft (taking bone from my hip, mixing it with medical miracle goop, and grafting that to my destroyed legbones) I was on my feet within 5 months (I’ve always said 7 months – but it was, on reexamination, less). Within 8 months, I regained 90% or so of the use of my arm.
A year after the accident I was walking without a limp. (That, apparently, with a fused tibia/fibula, is medically impossible).
Today, 22 years later, I have some impressive scars and a numb sport or two on my arm. But if I don’t share this with you or show off my scars – you’d have no idea how badly broken I was.
While my doctors, therapists, and nurses get a lot of credit for the work they did on and with me – I made a choice. Rather than let this terrible accident destroy me or ruin my life – I chose to rebuild and recover.
When something bad happens – you always have a choice
Not to put too fine a point on it – but unless the something bad kills you, you always have a choice. Every bad thing that happens to you, around you, or within your circles leaves you with a choice.
That choice is to let the bad destroy you – or provide grounds for rebuilding.
Again, unless you are killed, every something bad that happens leaves you with a choice. When you get dumped you choose to give up or date again. If you get fired, you choose to get angry and throw around blame or find a new job (or start a new business). When someone you love dies, you choose to either mourn them and let their passing put your whole life on hold or mourn them but keep living and remember what you loved about them.
To some, this might seem callous and cold. But it’s not. Bad things can, do, and will happen to you and everyone. It’s the yin and yang of the Universe and utterly unavoidable. However, after the initial happening – what you do next is yours to choose.
Right after a major loss, death, or injury, it’s human nature to feel negative. Of course, you get upset, angry, depressed, and otherwise negative when something bad happens. That’s normal and perfectly natural.
However – after the initial happening, how long you hold onto the sadness, grief, anger, and other negatives is up to you. There is no right or wrong answer about how long you should be feeling negative – but you can choose to rebuild or build anew.
This is where mindfulness comes into play.
Mindfulness of something bad to improve life going forward
Faced with uncertainty about my recovery, I had a choice. Lament my loss and stay angry at the asshole who hit me and upset about the pain of recovery – or focus to rebuild and get better as swiftly as possible.
I chose the latter. To do so, I used the power of conscious reality creation.
That power is built on a foundation of mindfulness.
Mindfulness is conscious awareness. Not of the world around you – but of yourself. Specifically, your thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions. That conscious awareness tells you who, what, why, where, when, and how you are – in the present moment. If what you learn doesn’t align with your desire – you’re empowered to change it.
That’s why I allowed no doubt, the possibility of not recovering, or like negativity into my conscious awareness. All I saw, my whole focus, was on total healing. I’d walk, run, and fence again.
And it worked. Now, 22 years later, all that remains are the scars.
Not all of them were physical. For a while after my recovery from the physical injuries, I was a mental, emotional, and spiritual wreck. But in time, I recalled the mindfulness for conscious reality creation to recover from my physical woes – and began to apply it more generally to my life.
I chose to start walking my own path
Although it took more than a decade after my accident to reach this point – in 2012, I started to develop this philosophy.
Mindfulness and positivity empower. When we are empowered, we can take control of our conscious mind, subconscious mind, and ego. That control lets us consciously create reality and manifest life as we desire it to be.
It’s not always easy, and it requires constant ongoing work. This is because change is the only constant in the Universe – so what’s true today might not be tomorrow. Ergo, how you desire your life to look today might be very different tomorrow.
Working with mindfulness helps us see this for what it is. And in the almost 11 years now I have been practicing my Pathwalking philosophy, my life has been largely amazing.
Sure, there have still been ups and downs, bad days, and good days. But overall – I have never felt more content and complete than I have since I started working to consciously create my reality.
And had something bad in the form of getting hit by that car not happened to me – I’m not sure I’d have experienced this. The lessons learned from that something bad have made my life so much more incredible than I’d believed it could be before.
No, I would never wish this on anyone. But that’s why I share my philosophy and experience every week. Because if I can help you consciously create your reality – without going through the pain and suffering I experienced – that makes my experience even better.
Like it or not, the Universe is a paradox. Hence, sometimes something bad can turn out to be good and life-changing for the best. The choice for what to do when this happens, however, is wholly up to you.
Have you taken something bad in your life and made something good from it?
This is the five-hundred and nineteenth exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – using mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.
I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world and empower as many people as I can with conscious reality creation.
Thank you for joining me. Feel free to re-post and share this.
The first year of Pathwalking, including expanded ideas, is available here. Check out Amazon for my published fiction and nonfiction works.
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