10 things you can do to flip negative situations into positives

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By Rachel Rofe http//www.RachelRofe.com
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Today's episode is all about when tough things
happen to you. Tough things happen to everybody.
It's just a part of life. While we don't always
have a choice of things happening to us that we
don't automatically love, we do have a choice in
how we respond to them. That's what this podcast
is about today. We're going to go over several
different ways where you can take a negative that
happens in your life and flip it into a positive.
You know the premise of this podcast is, if you
have a choice, choose a better life. I want to
give you ways to be equipped so that you can
actually do that, choose a better life and have
tools in your tool belts of choice. We're going
to go through several different ways and just
listen for whatever would work the best for you.
I'll have 10 different ways. Some of these might
not speak to you. Some of them might.
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Maybe you feel anger or misery or upset whatever
it is, and just funnel it into something
else. Maybe you get really mad at your boss and
you turn that into a great workout or you turn it
into cleaning your kitchen. Many of the greatest
pieces of arts, the greatest songs, they're
fueled from heartbreak and negative
emotions. Taylor Swift comes to mind when I talk
about this. Her whole career was started because
she had terrible experiences with ex boyfriends
and she wrote songs about them. There are so
many amazing masterpieces that have been created
from people who had a bad experience with
something, and they fuel that energy into
something else. I'm not saying not to feel your
feelings. Feel your feelings but I don't want you
to wallow in them. I want you to feel whatever
you're feeling and then instead of repeating the
story of why you're not feeling good over and
over and over, just fuel it into something else
and funnel it into something that actually brings
you fulfillment.
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When people would look at the books on their
Kindle reader, it would just look really weird
and it'd be very hard to read. I was getting all
these negative reviews. My sales were going down.
I obviously didn't feel proud of what I was
turning in, but I didn't know how to fix it
because I tried a million times and I'm not tech
savvy at all, so just driving me crazy. I ended
up working with a programmer and actually had him
create a software for me where basically, we
would take different books, put it into the
software and then, the books would end up coming
out Kindle formatted perfectly. We would post
them to Kindle and everything would be great.
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That program was called Kinstant Formatter and it
actually came out in 2010. It's now 2014, and
we'd still sell every single day. I ended up
deciding to sell this offer. We still sell a copy
every single day years and years later because
this is such a problem for so many people.
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Why I bring this up is because, if something's
happening in your life that is driving you crazy,
then look to see how you can find a solution
because maybe it's something that you can offer
as a product or a service. Maybe it's something
that has to do with your life purpose. Maybe it's
even just something that you can help others with
in a big way. Maybe this is a lesson you can pass
down to your children or tell your friends about
it, tell other people who have dealt with the
same thing. This could be something that you can
really help a lot of people with.
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When I say that, I mean think about it and think,
"Is this going to matter to me in a year? Is it
going to matter to me in a month? Will it even
matter to me in a week or by tomorrow? Because
a lot of times, it won't. A lot of times,
something happens and then it's really not that
big of a deal but because it's in that moment, it
looks like a bigger deal. Just try to step out of
it for a second. Going even further into the
perspective thing, you can also think about how
much worse whatever is happening could be but it
isn't. For example, let's say you get mad at your
child. You can think...if it works for you. This
doesn't work for everybody but, you can think
like, "At least I have a child. It would be so
much worse if something happened to her or him,"
something like that. If you get in trouble at
work or something, it could be, "What'd happen if
I wouldn't even have a job? What would happen
then?" Either of those things could help just
give you more perspective on what's the magnitude
of whatever you're upset about really is.
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If you always felt just awesome, you wouldn't
really know that awesome felt awesome, it would
just feel regular for you. Sometimes, if
less than stellar things happen, it actually
helps give you perspective. Sometimes, I'll tell
myself if I feel like I'm having a breakdown in
something that I'm breaking down so that I can
break through. I'll look at it as a chance to
open up more amazingness in my life because I'm
really feeling whatever I'm feeling that's not so
good.
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Maybe something's really bothering you and you
can use this as an opportunity to be vulnerable
and ask somebody for help. It'd be a great
opportunity to get to know somebody better. Or if
other people have the same type of problem and
you keep running into it, maybe you can join a
forum, a support group, whatever. If it's
something where maybe at work, you're getting
some tough feedback, then you can look at this as
an opportunity to A, feel compassion for whoever
has to give the tough feedback. You can
acknowledge that it's hard for them. Maybe you
can even schedule more time with that person to,
for example, if it's a boss, you can schedule a
time with them to do touchbacks on your progress
at work and do your best to improve because we
all want to be the best that we can be.
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If it's something where maybe you're getting in
an argument with your partner or something, you
can take this as an opportunity to get even
closer with them and look at it as a way to find
potential solutions together, be vulnerable about
what's behind whatever is happening. If you want
to use this as an opportunity to be closer to
people, you definitely can.
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Take some time to just be grateful that you're
human, that you have a body, you're alive, and
that you get to experience a range of
emotions. When something negative happens, you
can just say, "Yeah, some things do suck about
being human but there's also some really amazing
things. There's great people in my life. There's
the taste of delicious food, smell of fresh
flowers, how great it feels when you get a
massage, when you take a bath," whatever brings
you pleasure. You can take whatever is happening
that's negative and just use this to remind
yourself that you're so lucky to be alive.
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For example, let's say, even if something tragic
happens, someone dies or something, you can ask
yourself, "What's the best possible thing that
can happen from this? Maybe you now get to be
closer with your family or you get to let someone
help you and it draws you guys closer. Maybe you
just realized that someone stopped suffering now.
Or maybe you can even do something in the person
who died's honor because you want to have their
spirit live on. We've all seen different charity
campaigns from people who created them because
someone close to them passed away and ended up
creating all this good will in the world. If you
ask yourself what the best case can be from
whatever is happening, it can really help you
make a positive from it. If it's something like
you get in an argument with someone, then this
can be a great way to establish new
communication. A lot of times, arguments are just
mismatched expectations.
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You can use it to either establish better
expectations or maybe to communicate clearer
boundaries. There's all kinds of things you can
do. Whenever something negative happens, ask
yourself, "What's the positive?" If you're
feeling upset because you've gained weight, ask
yourself, "What's the benefit from this?" For me,
for example, I think I've mentioned in another
podcast how I got this thing called PCOS, and it
made me gain a bunch of weight. Basically now,
just practically everything makes me gain weight.
I'd been gaining more and more weight every year
and it drove me crazy at first. But now, I look
at it as...and I'm not perfect about it. But I
look at it like, "OK, this is great because I'm
forced now to eat super, super healthy because if
I eat anything that's not healthy, I'm going to
gain weight really easily." This is a great
opportunity to get margarines into my diet. When
I have margarines, I feel more energized anyway,
so that's great. Those are some different things
that you can do.
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For example, you know how you're talking to two
different people and you're trying to figure out
who's telling the truth and who's lying, the
person who's lying is usually going to
over exaggerate why they're telling the
truth. They'll just go on and on and on about
how truthful they are, whereas the person who's
telling the truth, they'll just be clear. They'll
just say their truth and that's it. They don't
really need to go in the library because they're
secure in their truth. The same thing happens if
something happens where maybe someone says
something about you or something and you really
get mad about it, usually, that's an awesome
opportunity for you to realize that there's
probably a kernel of truth to it because if it
didn't resonate with you and you didn't believe
it, you wouldn't care.
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If you hear something that bothers you, think
about how you can work through that. For me, I
know my general rule of thumb is that, anytime
something negative comes for me, maybe someone
said something or even just experience a negative
emotion, I ask myself, "What's going on behind
this? Why is this bothering me? It becomes then
a beautiful vehicle for clearing out whatever is
upsetting me. Get back to the origin of why this
started to bother me and how I can just change my
story around it. It's not going to work in all
situations but, for example, if someone died,
maybe it's hard to learn unless, unless actually
even that case, if someone died because they got
something that was preventable such as lung
cancer from smoking, you can take that as a
learning lesson, too. But in many cases, it does
work as well.
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Even if it's not true, it's not a bad mindset to
have, to just go through the world assuming that
everything is happening for your highest good. I
can think of far less empowering mindsets. Find
a blessing in whatever is happening. Even if you
break up with somebody or something, realize that
a lot of times, people will say that they broke
up with people as the best thing that ever
happened to them, or people got fired, it turned
out to be the best thing that ever happened to
them. Just know that whatever is happening is
happening for your highest good, and just be glad
for it. The last thing you can do is just take
ownership of whatever's bothering you. What I
mean is if something keeps coming up in your life
and it keeps bothering you, then make it your
business to figure out the solution to it so that
it either stops happening to you, because
sometimes we seem to get life lessons over and
over and over until we learn how to just get
through them. Or if it happens again anyway after
you've come up with a solution, then you're going
to be able to move through it a lot faster.
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I hope this helps you. As I said, you might not
resonate with every single one that I've
mentioned but, even if one or two popped up at
you as I was going through them, that would be
phenomenal. Again, if something happens in your
life that's not so great and, of course, it's
going to happen, then just think back to your
arsenal hero of tools that you can use and apply
them and see if it helps you. Just
experiment. I'd love to hear how it goes. If you
have any thoughts or comments or anything, feel
free to go on rachelrofe.com. Any questions, you
can also feel free to join our Facebook group
rachelrofe.com/facebookgroup. If you have
anything going on there and you want to talk
about it or look for reframes or brag about the
way that you've been able to reframe, you're
totally welcome to come in there.
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