I feel I’ve worked very hard over the last few years to build a life free from as many negative stresses as possible. Yet, as hard as I work to avoid it, sometimes life just throws a negative force my way and I get affected.

I wish I could tell you that I have a solution. A way to avoid bad experiences completely, but I have yet to come across one. Life just has a funny way of f*cking things up now and again, but its OK, because I’ve learned that I can build strength from moments that attempt to break my spirit.

When I’m knocked down, what I learn as I get back up makes me stronger. The lasting impact reduces as I increase my tolerance and patience to work through any negative experience life decides to put me through.

The future is promising and my present is shaping up nicely. I’m experiencing the life I have built for myself and for the first time, I’d become unconcerned with interruption.  The past few weeks have been a whirlwind of good vibes: from networking and connecting with new people, through to celebrating milestones and successes. However, getting caught up in all this current bliss, I overlooked any potential disruptions that would affect this positive flow of energy. I was productive, I was social and I was grounded.

I won’t go into detail, but an echo of disappointment and mistrust knocked me sideways as my identity was threatened. Everything I had work so hard for felt like it was unravelling because of this one, unrelated negative experience. It was so unexpected that disruptive thoughts consumed my consciousness, I was struggling to focus as I tried to regain a positive mental state.

I guess it’s what a lot of us do in situations that impact us negatively, I tried to overcome without processing and I tried to rebuild without reflection. There was bit of a journey between where my mind had ended up to where my mind needed to return, and I had to drive down a highway of reflection to get there. Full of wide turns and varying speed limits, the journey felt long but I found myself finding more peace as I passed each landmark I recognized.

I realized that this is one small, although significant, negative experience was not the energy I needed to nurture. Why dwell on it when I don’t want it? I don’t need it and by investing into it I’m only giving it more power over my life. It’s one of those situations that cannot be reversed, so I have two choices. I can choose to either let it affect all that I have worked on and worked for, or realize my aspirations and utilize this experience towards something productive.

I always forget that negativity is an uncomfortable loud scream over positivity, which is a gentle comforting whisper. Understanding this is how I learned to channel negativity. There are countless ways for me to be productive and do something that benefits me and my life. I just needed to do something to raise those little whispers, something that reminds me of my identity; doing something that reminds me of myself, to remind me of what I want.

I like to write, I like to blog and I like to be alone when I process my thoughts. So I opened up my laptop, poured myself a beer and wrote. Not really trying to think of what to write, I just allowed my mind to focus on whatever it wanted to focus on. Clearly the negative experience was still on my mind so that’s what I wrote about. The more I wrote the more I reminded myself of how much I love this! How much I love just doing what I do and how I want to make this a part of my living. This is what I want and I want more of it.

The more I engaged my passions the balance began shifting back in my favour; the more I was engaging in something that made me feel like me again, reminded me of my potential and my goals. I synchronized my energy into a flow state of productivity and before I realized it, I had this blog post written up, four more ideas drafted and organized my schedule for the week ahead. I overcome a negative experience and rediscovered my bliss by utilizing  things that make up my identity.

Like me, you too can turn your negative experience into something productive.

Whatever bad experience you come across in life, you can get through it. Life will continue to affect you again and again, but as long as you consistently engage in the things that make life worth living, then it won’t be too long before you return to your purpose and focus.

Just keep in mind, you must do whatever it takes to engage those comforting whispers in order to distance yourself from any annoying screams.