Day 3 of WEGO Health’s #HAWMC is:
Quotation Inspiration. Find a quote that inspires you (either positively or negatively) and free write about it for 15 minutes.
Selecting the quote was the EASY part. Of course, I picked the quote that’s near and dear to my heart . . . and my blog’s heart. (Want to know why I started my blog? Click here to read that story!)
“It’s just a bad day, not a bad life.”
Whenever I was trying to come up with a title for my blog, I sat on pinterest for HOURS looking at quotes. I started a list of different quotes that I thought I could potentially use for my blog’s title. The list grew and I knew it wasn’t going to be an easy task.
(This is the actual list of names I started looking at!)
I didn’t immediately settle on a name.
First, I went to go daddy and identified which domains were actually available (after all that would make all the difference, wouldn’t it?!). Then I started to narrow down the list. Once the list was narrowed, I began to meditate on the names I had left.
I liked a lot of them. And many of them resonated with me tremendously.
But It’s Just A Bad Day, Not A Bad Life kept coming back to me.
And I started seeing this quote EVERYWHERE.
It was like the meme Gods opened up the heavens and all of the images with this quote started popping up.
Time and time again, this quote showed up in my life.
And the more I thought about it, the more I realized it was exactly what I was looking for. It was exactly what I was trying to strive for.
During 2012 and 2013, most days I was stuck in a “my life sucks” mode. I lost relationships, I gained weight, I honestly didn’t even want to continue living.
What was the point? In all of the pain, in all of the suffering, in all of the heartache. . . how was that even life?!
It wasn’t.
All I wanted was a different life.
All I wanted was for my circumstances to change.
ALL I WANTED WAS TO SEE THE END POINT.
Up til that point, I always had to have the end in mind. I always had my eyes set on the prize. The goal at the end of the finish line. And not knowing how I was going to solve my health issues, and how I was going to get back to living a normal life, was literally killing me.
But through mindfulness, through yoga, through working through books like Mind Over Medicine and May Cause Miracles – I realized that the key to my happiness was within ME.
Not through lack of pain, not through lack of struggle, not through things or money or relationships. But deep within myself. I had to love myself, unconditionally. Despite obstacles, despite hardships, despite my circumstances.
And that’s when I started looking for the small things to celebrate in life.
Maybe it was the fact that I took a shower that day (which rarely happened back then. Yes, gross, I know.) Or the fact that I was vertical for more than a few minutes. Or that I left my house without a panic attack. Or that I had spent times with friends – even if it was for a few minutes.
Once I started to look at all of the small details in my life, I started to realize that my life wasn’t SO bad. Sure, it wasn’t ideal, but in the grand scheme of things my life didn’t suck.
Yup, I DEFINITELY had BAD days. I mean, horrible, no good, VERY FREAKING BAD DAYS. But, just because I had a string of bad days didn’t mean I didn’t have a good life!
I still had a loving family, a roof over my head, my life, and the love for myself.
This quote came to me at a time where I was trying to find my identity in the health crisis I had found myself in.
This quote reminds me on bad days to look at the positives and to seek out the good.
This quote is so much more than a quote to me.
It’s my life’s mantra.
Want to read the very first post I posted on my blog, titled “It’s Just A Bad Day, NOT A Bad Life”? Check it out here. (Whew, side note. I reread my first post, and the first few sentences had me tearing up thinking of my journey. Man, seriously. This quote couldn’t sum up my life any more perfectly.”
Wishing You A Pain Free Day!
