Have you experience bad things in your life? As for me, for example, I have had fracture bones on my primary hand. It feels sucks, because I can’t do what I normally can do. I did experience it, twice. It happened because of my sloppiness. About 7 years ago, when I was in college, there’s an incident that made me upset. But, I was just trying to deny the feeling while holding grudges. I’m not sure what really happen, but apparently I hit a wall without realizing it. It caused me to have a hair thin fracture on my right hand wrist. It was so small, so that it took 3 doctors to verify that it was a fracture. And because of that, I was in cast for about 3 weeks. Just like any people will do, I made a promise not to do it again. But, sadly, it happened again. This time, it’s not because I feel upset, but because of my carelessness and I was overconfident not to repeat it. It happened again last year in the same hand and same wrist but it was worse. For this time, it took me more than 1 month, to heal completely.

What can we learn from this experience? In our life, there are things that happened out of nowhere. Some are good, and maybe some or a few are bad. We might think that it’s just a bad luck. How do you react to that? after a while, this thought comes to me. It has happened in my life, might as well, I learn from it. These are the things that I learn out of my bad experience, specifically out of my fracture bones:

1. Be responsible with what you do
Life is really full of surprises. There are some things that you are grateful that it happened and some that you don’t. But in everything, most of those things, you can’t control it. When bad thing happens, it is easier to blame it on another people. When things goes wrong, it must not be my fault, right? it’s that person fault. or why there’s a puddle of water that made me slipped and fall that caused my broken wrist again. I don’t want it to happen, but because of that person or this thing, it happened. If I do that, I will just keep the grudges inside my head, and just think that life is not fair. And believe me, life is not fair. good things can happen to bad people and bad things can happen to good people. I can’t control what I will encounter, but I can learn to respond well

In a relationship with other people, there might be a bigger chance to get bad things from them. We might get blamed on something that we don’t know. Or we received a bad debt because of decision that other people made. The first step to learn from this, other than to accept the reality, is to be responsible with what you did. I did experience bad debt. It was because I don’t received enough money that causing me to take a loan. But in reality, I was the one that want to keep higher standard than what I can afford. By accepting my responsibility, I can learn different thing that make me grow as a person.

2. Learn something else out of the experience
It is easier to ask help from another person when you are in this situation. On the second time it happened, I have already married. I can always ask her to feed me and help me, right? But the only problem is she’s also working, not in the same company. So I can’t ask her to be with me 24-7 to help me all the time.There’s a saying “Kill two birds in one stone”, so that’s what I learned to do. When I was in cast, instead of cursing and ask pity for other people, I learn to use my left hand. I learn to write, to type with only my left hand, and I learn to use chopsticks and spoon with my left hand, and do things that I didn’t normally do. Did I get better? Yes, it did. although not as good as my primary hand, but I can say, I have plan B.

One thing to keep in mind, it will take longer time to do things, and it might take whole lifetime to master it, but when you have the opportunity, take it. Learn from it. It’s also true with your job. Sometimes when your boss or your colleague asked you to do something that out of your expertise. You have a choice to direct them to somebody else or take a time to learn it. If it will help you grow, take the opportunity. It is a scary things to do, but you will learn more and It will give more advantage to your career and your life.

3. Appreciate your people surround you
Now I’m a believer of when you notice it, you’ll find more of it. I thought people are bad and selfish, and i see more people around me that shows their selfishness. I usually thought that some people are lazy. But is it true? I found out that they seems to be like that in my mind only. When there’s an opportunity to help people, they are more willing to help than me. Have you ever think about it? As I noticed it, I can see more people who are helpful, even for a stranger. We can’t live by ourself only. We can be who we are today, because of the love of people around us.

Learn to appreciate people of what they have done and give permission to let them help you. If it’s the other way around, you have always asked people to help you, it is time for you to help them. Everyone in your life can teach you something that you don’t know and you can teach them something that they don’t know. Give opportunity for people to share their life to you and for you to share yours. It might be as simple as listening ears, or something else like helping to take care of their kids.

I can say that most people will learn more in a bad experiences compare to positive ones. One of my pastor taught me. “You won’t always receive what you like, but you can learn to like what you receive”. I’m sure you know that there are things that you don’t like happens in your life. When it happen, you have no reason not to take it. So might as well learn from it. Sometime when you are wondering why it happen, you know who did a mistake and sometime you don’t. in those situation, take the opportunity to learn from it. You can’t change the circumstances, but you can change your attitude towards it

Let us learn to make the most of every situation, especially the bad one.

What kind of bad incident that has happened or is happening in your life? What do you learn from it?

“You won’t always receive what you like, but you can learn to like what you receive” – Ev E. Rey

“A wise man will hear and increase in learning, And a man of understanding will acquire wise counsel,” – Proverbs 1: 5