Let’s be real honest: Sometimes life is tough, I mean it’s just plain hard. I mean there are days that we say to ourselves: “This is just not fair!” You know the kind of day I’m talking about. The one where you don’t want to get out of bed or if you did make it out, you’re thinking to yourself you should go right back. Trust me, I’ve had more than my fair share of those days and every now and then, they still try to creep up on me. It is important to realize that some days are going to be good and easy, and some days are going to be bad and hard, but a day is just a day and when you finish this one, there is another one coming.

Life has a way of making us focus on the bad and it is true that what we usually tend to focus on, we often get more of. I have discovered in my own life and living that a bad day does not have to mean a bad life. In fact, I am learning that some of life’s greatest lessons are learned in and through the bad stuff, so if I can just learn whatever the bad is trying to teach me, then I can grow on beyond it.

When I am having one of those bad days, I try to ask myself as soon as possible: “What needs to be fixed?” If there is something that can be fixed, then I want to fix it and not waller around in misery. When I find myself in the “bad place”, I ask myself: “It there a crisis that can be prevented?”, and if not, then why am I wasting my time worrying about it? Another self question that helps me fix my perspective is: “What new thing do I need to make life better?” In other words: Is their a new attitude that I need to adopt, a new belief I need to grab hold of or a new perspective that I’ve never considered before???

4 Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice! 5 Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is at hand. 6 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; 7 and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” -Philippians 4:4-7

I’ve discovered in living through just enough bad days that just as easily as our focus can be shifted from the positive to the negative, it can be shifted back from the negative to the positive. We’ve got the power. When life moves us from the positive to the negative, this shifted focus automatically moves us out of gratitude and into worry! Once worry takes over, we have a battle on our hands to not keep digging the hole deeper. It’s just part of life that there are going to be good days and bad days. The secret is to live and learn from them and not get stuck in the bad days and empower them to become weeks, months and possible even years.

Here are a few tips to grow through the bad to the good and get the most out of all that God has for you:

1.) Embrace The Experience!

Whatever flows to you has a purpose and the sooner you discover and embrace it’s purpose, the sooner it and you can move onto something else and something better. We cannot always avoid the negative, so sometimes we have to embrace it and get from it whatever it came to teach us.

2.) Deal With Reality!

Often, we think if we pretend everything is okay, then it will be, but when we eventually get back to reality, problems that we have not dealt with and worked through are still there and have often grown in size and complexity. If you are going through a bad time, then be honest and figure out what and why, and deal with it. The sooner you go through the process, the sooner the process will accomplish what it is there to do and you can move on to bigger and better.

3.) Do Your Part!

I’ve discovered through the years that most all of my bad days where in some way influenced by me and my attitudes and thoughts. When I started to accept responsibility for my life and began to hold myself accountable for making better choices and decisions, my life began to change. It was not that I did not have bad days, but the days became shorter and fewer.

4.) Count Your Blessings!

If you know me, then you know my belief in the power of gratitude. When my girls were little and would get ungrateful attitudes, I would have them go to their room and make a gratitude list. Taking the time to thank about all of the blessings we have in our life is often one of the quickest ways to shift our focus from the negative to the positive.

5.) Live, Learn, Laugh And Love!

This life is God’s gift to us and what we do with it is our gift to God. Live – It’s what you were created for. Learn – It’s one of God’s greatest gifts to help us become, which is really living. Laugh – Life really is funny and laughter is fun. Love – God is love and He created us in love to love. When we receive His love and share His love, it creates a powerful flow of the stuff of God flowing to and through us and this is what our existence is all about…

Life is tough, but so are you. You’ve got this!