Why Do Bad Things Keep Happening To Me?

Have you ever asked yourself why bad things keep happening to you?  How many times?  How often?  Unless you have a golden horseshoe up your…well, anyways. You’ve likely asked yourself this question at least once in your life. 

Hit after hit, a small break, just to be hit again, and this time even harder.  Oh, I got through that; all clear now.  NOPE, not done with you yet. Hit again. And again. And again.  To the point where you think, “This has to be the worst of it,” and then – BAM - not yet! Hit again.  And this time harder than you ever imagined. 

Sound vaguely familiar?  If you can’t relate even the slightest - well, good for you. And this blog is not for you. 

If you’re still with me – “WHY ME,” right?  Why am I the one constantly getting dealt these sh!t cards?  What did I do to deserve this? Why am I the one who has to work so hard at life? 

I’m gonna hit you with some hard truths.  No one is free from bad things happening to them. Literally, no one.  Sadly, good people don’t always win. Bad people win too.  And evil people…yeah, they win even more.  I’ll throw another one your way – there’s nothing you can do about it.

 Life is pretty much always in a state of contradiction.  As in, life is not always equal.  As in, life is not always easy.  However, it also means that life doesn’t always have to be hard.  We need to understand is that a life of constant ease and comfort does nothing for us because it’s simply not realistic.  If we live in that mindset, then we’ve already failed.  The reality is that, as humans, we need to grow and evolve constantly, and we don’t do that when everything is rainbows and butterflies.  We grow and evolve when challenges and hardships are presented to us.  What’s also a hard reality is that challenges and hardships are the only guarantee we have in life (minus death).  Some of us will be dealt really bad cards, while others just a little bad.  Some will have to go through the hardships earlier in their lives and maybe even have their childhood robbed from them.  Others may not have life-altering hardships until they're an adult. 

Personally, I had a decent childhood.  I grew up in a pretty text-book household - blue-collar family whose biological parents stayed married, loving, supportive, and pretty stable.  In my 20’s – I lived my BEST damn life.  In my 30’s, I took a step forward on that standard life path - I got married, excelled in my career, and had two beautiful baby girls.  My life wasn’t terrible.  On the outside, I lived a really comfortable life.  On the inside, well we weren’t finally strapped so that was comfy. WAs I happy?  Well, I lived for being a mom, so sure. 

Sometimes, it’s real cut and dry, black and white, no denying the hardship.  Other times, it’s not so self-evident.  For some of us, it’s easy to remain blind for the sake of comfy.  For some of us, there are no blinds, but we have no choice.  For others,, we have to be forced into a situation over and over and over and over again to see what’s really happening.   Maybe we’re too blind to see the warning signs.  Maybe too stubborn.  Perhaps we see them but are too scared to accept them.  And for some, it takes something so extremely difficult to completely rock our lives, or worse, almost take our lives, for us to acknowledge and accept what’s happening.   

It wasn’t until life basically tried to kill me that my “blinders” were removed and I realized I needed to start making myself a priority. That moment, when I decided to choose ME, is precisely when, unknowingly I took my first step down my personal real hard path.   Here I am, almost 3 years after that first step, and guess what?  I’m still on it. 

 “If you dance with the devil, then you haven’t got a clue, for you think you’ll change the devil, but the devil changes you” (J.M. Smith) – Hi, it’s me.

When you’re in deep, you may feel like everything around you is crumbling. You may be losing at every single turn.  Over and over again.  Financially.  Emotionally.  Physically. You’re drowning. All hope gone.  At some point, your sh!t show of a life might get so demanding that your support system starts to back away because they’re exhausted, negatively impacted, you’re unsavable, and their life needs to be a priority.  At that point, everything you VOWED you wouldn’t let happen when you took that brave first step…it happens.   

Sadly, for some, what happens to us is entirely out of our control, and no matter how hard we try to fight or how straight of a line we stay on, we can’t get away from it.  So then what?  Do we just sit there on our sad little path, feeling sorry for ourselves while we watch our entire world crash down around us?  No. We can’t.  Why?  Because “Winners never Quit and Quitters never Win.” (Vince Lombardi)

How do we cope with, overcome, and prevail from the bad things that happen to us? 

1.  Do not deny it!

Your first step is not avoiding it and not brushing it under the rug.  In the moment, it’s real tempting to avoid the “thing” by overloading yourself with work, tasks, and other distractions.  Denial is not your friend here.  Although it may temporarily numb the pain, it will not heal you. 

There is no way around it.  You will absolutely have to deal with bad things happening to you FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.  The quicker you can accept that reality, the better off you are, and the quicker you can heal from that sh!t. 

2. Feel. It. ALL.

Grieve. Ugly cry it out.  Whatever you gotta do.  Allow yourself to FEEL all the feelings no matter how deep, dark, and painful they may be.  You embracing the not so pleasant feelings - THAT is your path to healing and overcoming whatever happened to you. 

I give myself one day.  One single day to crawl under my rock, cry, feel sorry for myself…all the things.  That’s it.  Day two - It’s on because we can’t sit there forever. What’s done, is done.  Ready?  5, 4, 3, 2, 1 – GAME ON!

3. Own it.

We accepted it. We felt it.  Now we gotta own it sister.  Journal about it.  Digest it.  Process it. Own that sh!t.  Where it like a dog d@mn gold medal (no, that’s not a typo). 

It’s overused and cheesy AF, but it’s true - “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” right?  Cool, so you’re still breathing.  Good.  Now put your big girl panties on and remind yourself of the f&cking bad @ss QUEEN you are. 

4. Flip your script.

What I mean is that we need to shift our focus from the bad thing that happened to us to the OPPORTUNITY we’ve been presented with.  Focus on the fact that everything that happens to us will absolutely change us.  Are you going to let it change you for the worse?  Or are you going to let it change you for the better?  The BETTER, right?  Life is messy AF; we aren’t guaranteed mountaintops and rainbows every day.  Let what happened to you be PART OF YOUR STORY.  Your story of adversity, hard work, courage, and perseverance. 

One simple thing I do is change my words to shift my mindset and approach.  For example, I replace the word “challenge” with the word “opportunity”.  As a cycling instructor, I throw a whole lotta hard pushes and interval “challenges” at my people (ILYSM LifeCYCLE Community), but I never call them “challenges”.  I call them “opportunities.”  What’s more inviting?   “I am going to throw two real hard challenges at you” or, “I’m going to give you two opportunities to get stronger in this song”? 

5. Act.

Once we can shift our mentality to the opportunity of growth we’ve been given, we can focus on what has to happen to crawl outta the dark valley and up the mountain. Thoughts create possibilities, and actions create results. 

First, remember you are in control at this point.  Second, do not be ashamed or afraid to ask for help or reach out to friends or family.  This is a big one.  The power of simply unloading and getting it out of your head will do wonders for your healing.    

This is then where you take a real deep dive look into what happened. 

Some situations, like the loss of a loved one, for example, there truly is nothing you could have done to prevent or lessen the blow.  In these situations, your actions are to hold on to memories, meditate on ways to forgive and move on, and hold on to the fact that the pain will never go completely away but, with each passing day, will become more and more of a distant memory. 

Other situations are more tangible, where you can identify specific problems.  In these instance,s you need to dive in deep.  What caused this? With what you could control, what could you have done differently?

6. Prevail.

If we can find some sort of meaning within whatever happened to us, we can then embrace the lessons.  Is there a lesson? What opportunities did you get from this? What can you gain from it? 

For example, be grateful for every toxic relationship you’ve ever been in.  Why?  Because maybe you’ve become enlightened to what it means to be mentally and verbally abused.  Perhaps now you know what it feels like when someone is using you.  What it feels like to be taken for granted.  Now, you know your worth.  Now, you know how you should be treated and what you deserve.  Now, you won’t accept any f&cking less because you are in fact a high-caliber QUEEN.

For me, I’m grateful for the three year long (still going) rollercoaster blows that keep knocking me off my feet, hit my core and heart more than I ever thought possible, and interrupt everything in my life.  Why?  Because if I hadn’t gone through it, I wouldn’t know the STRENGTH within me.  I wouldn’t know how much WILL it takes and how much WILL I actually have to fight for myself and my daughters. 

If the hits had stopped coming, the spark within me to help others, to motivate others, to lift other women up - it would have never been lit.  If they stopped, I wouldn’t have been inspired by the potential of my own prevail and the possibility of my journey being able to help someone else.  If I didn’t go through ALL the things…I wouldn’t be here right now, writing this. 

Even if my words touch just one soul, give even a centimeter of inspiration to one person, or help open the eyes even just a little bit for someone going through something bad and maybe possibly slightly helping them…then I’m forever grateful for the opportunity.